Circuitry
by little-spark
Summary: (Post-Beyond) Jaylah remains a mystery to those around her. Scotty is the first to notice the girl drinks every night to "take the edge off" and finds that his questions about who Jaylah is linger on his mind far longer than he cares to admit. Admiring her and intrigued by her, he's torn by growing attachment and the need to let her go when the Enterprise leaves Yorktown.
1. 01 - 07

**A/N:** Gosh, so I originally posted this story on AO3 and forgot that existed again. I'm horrible. I have fics here I need to update. But anyway, here's a romantic Scotty and Jaylah novella in case anyone was into that. Also, no one seems to have mentioned the name of Jaylah's species, which bothers me to no end. So until that comes out, I'm just dubbing her a Reedollian, given that the entire creation of her character had been based on a Jennifer Lawrence character named Ree Dolly. I mean, heck, why not. Reedollian it is.)

1.

If she hadn't proved her skills on Altamid to the whole of Starfleet already, she certainly went above and beyond all expectations upon the beginning of her formal training. Her ability to decipher and reverse-engineer machinery and software of varying types seemed to be innate. As a Reedollian, her age was entirely unclear—she slipped in well amongst the fresh enlists and the twenty-somethings easily. All the same, she could run academic _laps_ around them. She was every bit as capable as she was a mystery.

As per protocol, she had been given proper medical and psychological evaluation. There were still conditions that troubled her, but her ability to compartmentalize emotions were on par with Spock's.

"If y'don't mind me askin'… how long were y'on Altamid, anyway?"

Gold eyes flit to the right, glancing upward for a moment as she sucked in a breath and answered, "Five and ten years."

It was a different answer than she'd given Uhura. Occasionally, Scotty saw moments where that "effective compartmentalization" trait of hers wavered. She was good at giving a straightforward answer, the sort that one would get from Spock—unburdened with all the details that would hold the answers everyone really wanted.

 _Who are you? Where did you come from?_ When _did you come from? How did you learn all of this? Are your gifts inborn or acquired?_

She dodged questions as gracefully as she dodged kicks and blows on the sparring mat. Her competency and usefulness to Starfleet led them to accept the answers she gave without third (or fourth) question, regardless of occasional inconsistencies.

2.

The reconstruction of the _Enterprise-A_ would take roughly seven months. Seven months of downtime in Yorktown, in which many of the crew were grateful to have some sense of home. Jaylah's daily routine was a pattern of physical training (for her own personal entertainment,) classes, Starfleet-regulated PT, more classes, and then exploration of Yorktown that always ended in varying bars.

In the first weeks the crew had spent on Yorktown, Scotty was all too glad to jump back into his bar-hopping routine, gambling where he could, getting punched out once or twice over bad games of pool, and bickering with Keenser over more alcohol than any one (human) man should be consuming on a nightly basis.

Their paths crossed frequently, although it would be several crossings of these respective wires before any conversation sparked.

"Ye come 'ere offen, Lassie?" Scotty had greeted her, having always wanted to toss that line jokingly toward her.

She was always of stern face with infrequent smiles. Taking his question literally, she answered, "No. This is my first coming. I am still searching for a drink to 'take off the edge' they speak of."

He wasn't always sure what to follow her statements up with—she did not joke often. Yet, still, it seemed that she preferred their company. She followed Scotty and Keenser for the duration of the evening, drinking with them and watching them bicker with confusion and, what Scotty suspected was the first trace of amusement. At least, occasionally, he caught a smile forming at the corner of her lips.

She wasn't nearly as glum as she seemed, was she?

Jaylah had come to the bars each night to drink, and drink she did. She drank to "take off the edge" and she threw back liquor like a fish filtering water through tiny, translucent gills. He hadn't seen even the mildest sign of a buzz creeping up on her, much less the tell-tale slur of drunkenness slipping its way through her stiff accent.

Keenser had squandered his budget for the night away on cards. He ducked out early, on that particular seventh chance meeting with Jaylah. Keenser hopped off the bar stool, announcing bitterly that he was out for the evening. He gestured between Scotty and Jaylah, a Roylan _good luck_ , sign— _…the 'ell was that s'posed ta mean?_

Jaylah had just downed another shot of whiskey when Keenser left. The clink of her empty shotglass against the small wall she'd built between herself and Scotty drew his attention from Keenser's drunk waddling. Jaylah glanced over at the third untouched glass of pickle juice that had been offered as a chaser. She narrowed her eyes at it and asked, "Why does this keep happening? I do not order this strange juice."

"Y'er supposed ta chase it, Lassie. Withee pickle juice. 'at's a pickleback shot."

Jaylah looked at the empty glasses that had once held whiskey and then at the corresponding (untouched) glasses of pickle juice. She winced and then downed one. Had she been drinking all of that liquor without knowing what a chaser was the entire time? His jaw was slack for a moment, as he fought off a laugh. Scotty's resolve broke when she made a soured expression from the pickle juice's taste.

"Who would drink this?"

"Well, ye don't 'ave to, y'could easily jus' get the Jameson and not 'ave that wall of glasses… I just… alright, that's, that's a wee bit of a crime there, I'll just… if y'don't mind—"

Reaching past her, he happily took the other two shotglasses and emptied them in two quick swigs.

Jaylah looked at him with an expression just as confused and offended as her last, "…you just…"

At that moment, he recalled just how easily she could snap him in half, should she be so pressed to do so. Perhaps, in retrospect, taking anything from her, (whether or not she wanted that juice,) was a categorically _horrible_ idea. He choked out a quick, "Oh, please don' kill m—"

This must have been a cultural faux pas.

"First, you suggest this horrid concoction and then you take without it being first offered."

"Ye—ye din't look like ye wanted it, I just… it was in y'er way an'—"

"How could you so casually ingest such a disgusting thing?"

"I…" he thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged, "…well, I've 'ad worse. But it's not that bad."

"Foul." Jaylah grunted, her moody gaze falling back on her glasses, "…I would like another."

"Another…" Scotty repeated, before he shrugged and said, "…alright. Confusin' but alright, Lassie. This time, let me show ye 'ow it's done."

When he managed to get the bartender's attention again, he ordered them both another pair of drinks. She watched him, this time, as he demonstrated what chasers were for. She looked at the pickle juice with disdain and with a sigh, she drank back the whiskey and followed it quickly with the pickle juice.

"See, now, the taste's not so bad after that, right?"

She winced and shook her head, gagging slightly, "…I do not like these chasings. I prefer not to be chasing."

She garnered a laugh from Scotty and he agreed then, at least for the remainder of the evening, "Right'en, no more chasings."

Curiosity got the better of him, the more he watched her experiment with different liquors and showed very little sign of any effect. Did she drink for the taste, or was she actually feeling something and simply hid it well? What did an alcohol buzz feel like for her? He made the mistake of trying to keep up with her that night, hoping that if she drank into a slightly relaxed state, she'd help him win a bet Jim had started— _"oh, of course, all women lie about their age… I'm saying she's probably about twenty-three, tops,"_ —which even Bones had commented on with a very casual, _"…you really don't pay attention, do you? She's closer to thirty than you know, Jim, and she's not on your side of it."_

Fifteen years on Altamid. Give or take. If she were really closer to thirty, she must have been a teenager when Altamid happened. It was hard to imagine her going through hell back on that planet. Just the thought of Krall laying a finger on her got him riled up. Not that he was any sort of fighter who'd last more than two breaths next to the guy.

Her family…

In a moment of clarity, he suddenly found Jim's bet less humorous.

"Ye gettin' on well in the Academy?"

"It is enjoyable," Jaylah answered, starting on another tall glass of some stout she had yet to try. She brought the glass to her lips and quirked her head to the side at the taste. It was a small expression he caught gracing her features when she found a beer she liked. She took a longer, deeper swig of it and setting the glass down, she burped with very little regard for manners. Perhaps a cultural difference, there, too. Maybe just the solitude. It was a little endearing in an odd way—a far cry from the women he'd boozed with who pretended they were utterly made of plastic. Where they were all high heels and crossed legs, she was heavy boots and knees spread like a man.

"I knew they'd take ye, ye've got so much more raw talent than ye know, Lassie. Ye'll be the top of the fleet in time, I'm sure of it. Where'd ye learn yer way aroun' a ciruit panel, anyway?"

"From my home."

Her home. The Franklin. Surely there had to be some kind of formal education prior.

"Ye'ever learn it anywhe'else, eh? School or your old home, er…" Perhaps he was overstepping by bringing the past up.

She drummed her fingertips on the glass. She drummed hard.

"Fifteen years is time enough to learn from my home."

Fifteen years again. A constant where there would have been a variable. It could have simply been a repeated variable, or simply a constant for an equation she saved just for him. He wondered if it were simply wishful thinking, before quickly kicking the act of _wishful thinking_ aside—there was absolutely _no_ wishful thinking with Jaylah, she was categorically _off-limits_.

She didn't need to be hanging around bars getting drunk with a guy like him.

Well. She was probably not getting drunk. He certainly was, though.

Scotty couldn't remember much of the night beyond that, having taken a few more shots with her before learning the hard way that he should _never, ever_ try to keep up with Jaylah at a bar.

He woke up in the men's room at a little past 0630 with the worst hangover of his life. Somehow he'd not been kicked out. The night regulars seemed to take more amusement in the way he made the hobble of shame from the men's room. Jaylah was nowhere to be seen. He hadn't expected to see her out there.

3.

The next couple of days saw Scotty deciding to give the bar-hopping a rest. Keenser went out on his own the first night, but opted to stay behind in Scotty's Yorktown apartment and bicker there over a considerably smaller amount of booze and beer. The crooked dartboard on Scotty's wall was hit with Keenser's surprisingly accurate eye.

Jaylah preferred to keep herself shrouded in mystery. During the day, she was compliant enough with the rules and regulations of Starfleet. She wedged small subtleties of rebellion in where she could. A knack for wearing boots out of uniform, a habit of sparring just a little too hard, a penchant for _never_ _having a goddamn hangover no matter how late she was out drinking._

Was it likely that she was out running her same routine? Physical training, classes, training, classes, training, drinking, sleep (maybe?) then repeat. Maybe she was out there trying her damndest to clean out every bar in town before getting stationed elsewhere. Maybe she was out there, _right now_ , experimenting with a chaser that didn't make her gag or cringe. Maybe, Scotty thought bitterly, he was thinking a bit too much about Jaylah.

When an outlier dart bounced off of the board and toppled just a hair's width shy of Scotty's head, he realized he'd been in a mild daze the whole evening. Keenser glowered at him. Scotty shrugged, "Aye, kinna guy space out once inna while? No need ta be aimin' at me 'ead!"

Keenser cackled.

When he went back to the bar, he'd hoped that no one recognized the guy who passed out in the toilets.

"Hey, Men's Room! Welcome back!" An attractive female bartender called out to him. Great. Lovely.

Keenser cackled a cackle just like before, just like always.

"Thanks fer that," Scotty grumbled—dammit, Keenser.

They took up the same spots they held the last time they were there and begun their nightly ritual. Jaylah never showed. Perhaps she'd moved on to another bar.

It would be two weeks before they crossed paths again, at a bar almost across the south end of Yorktown.

Keenser had again abandoned him early and drinking alone was never a ball. Taking his own leave, Scotty stepped out through a back exit, if only to see what he'd missed out on in the patio area. There were a handful of kissing couples whispering against the walls and mingling in shadows. Sitting on a table's edge at the far side of a dark wood patio, Jaylah was alone, staring upward at the glass shield enveloping Yorktown, her eyes fixed on the stars beyond.

Jaylah's eyes were half-lidded, sleepy, and the bold shine of sunshine gold in her irises had somehow melted into a cold silver. Her head and her shoulders had the tell-tale sway of a slightly more-than-buzzed drinker. It looked as though she could nod off at any moment.

There it was—proof that she _did_ in fact, at some point, get drunk.

"A-ha! I knew it!" Scotty exclaimed—Jaylah didn't react—and he continued as he approached her with a beaming grin, "So ye _kin_ get plastered, oh, _oh_ , this is _rich,_ Keenser's gonna be so pi…"

Upon closer inspection, however, Jaylah's intoxication was far less amusing. Tear streaks were wet along her cheeks, leaving a slightly pearlescent sheen on her moon-white skin. She didn't look as though she were having a good time at all.

"Oh… oh, no, Lassie, I'm sorry, are ye…"

"Leave me alone, Montgomery Scotty." Jaylah said, voice cold and quaking.

He sucked in a breath—leaving her alone was the last thing he really wanted to do. Alone, emotional, intoxicated (maybe?) and in less-than-favorable part of Yorktown at 0345. But she wanted her privacy. He respected that. No one liked to cry in front of their friends. He averted his eyes and nodded.

"Aye. Aye, ofc'erse. Not, not 'e problem. I just, well, heck, Lassie, are ye alright? I can't just leave ye like this."

"It is not a matters that concerns you."

Well. There really was no arguing that.

There was a peculiar and certain kind of sting that tore through him when he glimpsed again, the glistening trails crossing down her face. Her eyelids had the smallest hint at a swell and where every other crying woman he'd seen would normally be red in the face, Jaylah's flesh took on a deep cerulean. Around the eyes, over the cheeks, spotty around the nose. Her blood was blue. The flush to her face was icy and blue.

The blood vessels in her eyes, a web of blue lines.

Being "blue" took a whole new level of literal on Jaylah.

"Right, then. I'll be leavin' ye. I hope ye feel better," Scotty conceded defeat and carved his path away, but not without turning back to her once more, "…ye know, ye aren't alone 'ere. I, uh, what I mean is…"

Jaylah looked at him, waiting, listening.

What _did_ he mean? He couldn't possibly…

"What I mean is… I don' really know _what_ I mean, but, ye… ye jist aren't alone, 'ere. I… if ye ever need anythin', anythin' at all, just say the word, Lassie, and I'm there. For you."

"Montgomery Scotty…" Jaylah said—her unique way around his name had a ring that echoed in his dreams as of late—and spinning her words with the utmost grace, she said, "Go. Away."

Fair enough, then.

Well, there was not much else he could do for her. She wanted her privacy. She was also more than capable of dismantling any unsuspecting threat that crossed her. With a sullen about-face, he made to leave. It was only when he heard a very unceremonious _thump_ on the patio's wooden deck that he paused. He winced, hoping he hadn't just heard what he thought he heard. One of the giggling couples at a nearby table stopped giggling abruptly and one called out in his direction, "Hey, man, I think your girlfriend just passed out."

"Is she alright?" The fairer half of the couple asked.

"Oh, heck…" He murmured. She may or may not wake up and snap his neck like a twig, but it was worth it to at least get her somewhere safe. He took her into his arms—and she was much heavier than she looked (or was it that he was more out of shape than he remembered?)—and carried her out.

Her alcohol tolerance was such a damned question that he wasn't sure whether he should run her to the nearest hospital or just simply get her back to her apartment. Bones was only four doors down from her residence… and any time was always a fantastic time to bother the old bastard.

Jaylah was in and out of consciousness throughout the walk.

"Lassie, ye back with me 'ere?"

Her response was unintelligible muttering, something in her language that he couldn't hope to understand— _"Rokk iththill!"_ —It didn't sound happy with this turn of events, though. An occasional flail of one semi-limp arm made that point clear. He _thought_ she was aiming for him, but he wasn't quite sure— _"Rokk iththill, thusu!"_ —if there were any loanwords between her tongue and Vulcan, she _may_ have called him an idiot, though.

By the time he made it to apartment 541—the residence of one Leonard McCoy—his arms were screaming under her weight and he was sure that if she was going to wake and break him, he wouldn't have the strength left to even lift a finger in protest.

"God, man, it's almost five in the morning… have you been out all night!?" Bones glowered, before realizing who the woman in Scotty's arms was, "Jaylah? What in God's name happened!?"

"Aye, Lassie drank a wee bit too much, passed out, not sure if we should worry 'bout alcohol poisoning."

"Oh hell, get her in here, I'll take a look. Why didn't you take her straight to an infirmary?!"

"Because ye lived right next door to 'er, if she were fine we could just have 'er go back home. Ye know she doesn't like strangers pokin' an' proddin' 'er."

"Never understood those sorts who resist medical care with such vitriol. Set her down."

"Oh, thank god." Scotty's sore arms were all too happy to set Jaylah on the couch. He stepped aside, stretching his muscles as Bones looked over her, checking her eyes and pulse.

"She get sick at all?"

"Nah, but she'll probably have one 'ell of a 'angover. If she even gets 'angovers."

"Reedollians have a keen ability to metabolise alcohol. It _is_ admittedly a bit of a concern if she drank enough to disable her like this. You lovebirds haven't been binge drinking every night have you?"

Looking back at Bones, slightly incredulous, Scotty answered, " _Me 'n her?_ I… I just ran into 'er a coupl'a times at a few bars."

"I'd work on that cover story."

"Cover… there's, there's not'in goin' on!"

"…and it looks like there's nothing going on of great concern here, either. She seems all around fine, just incredibly drunk. Encourage water intake and keep an eye on her. Be sure when she's coherent again she gets some food in her and stabilizes her blood sugar level. It's a bit off, but I wouldn't call it alcohol poisoning. In my personal opinion, she might be waking up to her first real hangover in a short moment here."

"Short moment?"

"She's come home stumbling once or twice, but she's always fine after about two or three hours of sleep."

"Two 'er three hours…?"

"Well, Reedollians have an exemplary metabolism compared to humans. It's kind of the evolutionary lottery if you're a drinker. Just get her home, let her sleep it off. Get some sleep yourself, man. Enough with these wild parties…" Bones said.

"She's two doors over, aye?"

"You don't know your own girlfriend's address?"

" _She's not_ —she's not me girlfrien', Bones." Scotty growled, before moving to pick Jaylah up again. He bolted away quickly when one pale arm flung fast for his head, to which he whispered harshly to Bones, "See?!"

"Well, I'd react that way too, if I were your girlfriend."

"Oh, _heck_ …" Scotty groaned.

"Here, let me…" Bones moved in and again, Jaylah swung—both men half-gasped, half-yelped, bolting away from the girl. A stray mug was knocked off of the coffee table and all of _flew_ across the lounge until it shattered on the kitchen wall. Scotty winced.

Bones eyed Scotty, his tone cross, "…I _liked_ that cup."

"Do we really 'ave to move 'er?"

"What are you going to say when she wakes up on my couch!?"

"Ye hosted the afterpar'y."

"Get your girlfriend and _go_ somewhere. Anywhere."

Scotty leaned in again, and her predatory growl of, _"Kel-rokk ni iththill!"_ was more than enough to have him leap away. He gave Bones a pleading look.

"Alright. She can have the sofa till she wakes up." Bones sighed, dragging a palm across his tired face, "…you'd best stick around."

"Why me?"

"Well, I don't want to be the first thing she sees when she wakes up." Bones shrugged, "That'd be one hell of a misunderstanding."

Scotty feigned a half-laugh as Bones made his way back to his bedroom and said, very casually, "Oh, aye then, don't mind me, I'll just… make me'self cozy 'ere and wait to have me 'ead kicked off, first thing inna mornin'."

"Thattaboy, Scotty." Bones shut the door behind him and that was that.

There wasn't much more to the remainder of the evening. Scotty took a seat on the sofa across from the sleeping Jaylah and decided that this wasn't much different from what he'd gone home and done anyway. The only new addition to the equation was Jaylah. Despite his over-exaggeration, he didn't _think_ she'd be that upset and disoriented when she came to… at least, he tried to remain cautiously optimistic about it. She was a rough sort of girl, but she wasn't a maniac… her half-asleep, half-violent reactions weren't out of vitriol.

Just self-defense.

He wasn't sure how much he wanted to follow that train of thought. She didn't deserve any of what happened to her, any of what made her so quick to swing, or so quick to binge-drink herself into oblivion like this.

4.

At some point in the night (or rather, early hours of the morning) he'd dozed off. When he came to, Jaylah was gone, without a word, and luckily, without his head in tow. How long ago that had been, he couldn't be sure. Bones was long-gone, opting to leave Scotty passed out on the sofa, pillows huddled in his arms.

Just like before, the following days were decidedly devoid of Jaylah. She had a way of coming and going as she pleased—or perhaps, it was more aptly that their paths were never meant to cross in any major way, beyond occasional brushes with alcohol-fueled shenanigans, small laughs, and then parting once more.

It was beginning to bother him that he was mulling over that more and more with each day.

They did not live anywhere near one another, nor did they have any main trajectory of the day that would lead them to bump into one another, save for those incidences at the bars—which he was starting to believe Jaylah should take it easy on.

Her schedule was always the same.

Train, class, train, drink, sleep, repeat. Like clockwork. Always moving. Even if, by chance, he was tasked with passing by the Academy to meet with his superiors, he caught himself hoping to run into her again. If only to have a small laugh about the night before, if there were any to be had. Probably not. She'd been in a state. Probably wouldn't even want to talk about it.

"You keep looking over at the PT field." Bones observed, walking beside Scotty, who was rather buried in a number of boxes, filled with files and hardcopy logs they had managed to salvage from the Franklin.

"How kin ye even see me 'ead pass'all these boxes?" Scotty answered.

He'd taken up volunteering on the Franklin's restoration project on a whim, if only to pass the time as the Enterprise was rebuilt. That afternoon saw them walking boxes to the Academy's History and Archival Works Department, at least, what Starfleet decided would be procured for academic repurposing.

Admittedly, Scotty volunteered the minute he heard mention of the Academy.

 _Why the hell did I volunteer for this…?_

"You're being more obvious than a circus parade waltzing through a cemetery."

"The 'eck does that even _mean_?"

"She's in the science department right now, anyway. Pretty damn impressive, that woman. She's setting records for crashing through the coursework like a convict through a confessional."

"I knew she could do it. I alw'eys knew it. The Lassie's ginna be a top-rankin' engineering graduate before ye know it. Might jist break all me records 'ere. …'an ye'know, it wasn't even entirely me that got the Franklin runnin' again—all I did was look at it with ano'er set of eyes. We have the Lassie to thank for all of it. She reverse engineered that whole navigational system, 'in… what?"

Bones was grinning ear to ear. He shook his head, "Nothing. Go on."

"What the 'eck was that look for?"

"You know what that look was for."

"Oh, heck, you carry the damn boxes!" Scotty grumbled shoving them back into the doctor's arms. Bones was cackling.

"You could really go on and on about her all day, couldn't you? Can't say there's a good prognosis for that." Bones tsked.

"Yeh, yeh, and I'm sure ye'got a metaphor for it, too."

"Well, man, you're about as smitten as a baker's daughter in a cupcake factory."

"…right, _where_ do ye think of these?"

They bantered a path down the halls—and in spite of Scotty's efforts to deny the doctor's accusations of inappropriate fondness for Jaylah, he had to admit, the telltale symptoms were there. He'd had enough flings and failed relationships to know, all too well, the way that downward fall started as a slow descent just before it became a full-on _drop_.

It wasn't a drop yet. Just a slight downward curve, still, that he could still up and run away from.

"I'm not _smitten_. I just… I just really admire 'er. She's all brain as well as brawn. She'll be a Chief Engineer 'erself one day. If not that, then maybe even a Captain. Y'gotta respect it. She bailed us out of there."

"There's a fine line between hero worship and a high school crush, my friend."

All that talk about Jaylah was making him nervous. He didn't _like_ her in that way, he argued with Bones, who was taking all too much amusement from teasing him with the fact.

"In fact, speaking of the good hero…" Bones gestured forward. Jaylah was walking their way with a handful of other enlists, all of which were carrying boxes of folders and files as well.

Jaylah radiated confidence and maybe even a bit of boredom in the scarlet uniform. Every bit of it was unique on her body—long black sleeves under the red that reached down like gloves, stopping at her palms. Black tights under the uniform's skirt that hugged her slender legs down into the dirty black boots she would wear until she was ordered back into something regulation—and knowing her, she would be caught with those boots again, a day or so later.

"Montgomery Scotty. McCoy's Bones." She acknowledged them as she passed with the entourage of enlists. Scotty wanted to say more, but all he could do was grin and wave.

"That's not my…" Bones muttered from behind the boxes, with a defeated sigh, " _McCoy's Bones_. Alright. Alright, I guess it's stuck. Come along now, lover boy."

Scotty was shushing him quickly, praying Jaylah was already far enough away to have not heard that.

Jaylah's ivory mane waved behind her, contrasted like a ray of white against the scarlet uniform. Each step she took was steady and as if she were walking through some divine meditation. He watched her lips move as she spoke to another enlist. The echo of a smile was faint at the corner of her lips. Scotty thought, for a second, he may have seen a glint of gold fixed in his direction, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking. Her head turned again, her gaze fixed before her, and soon enough, she and the enlists were gone.

Alright. Maybe there was a _wee_ bit of a crush.

But crushes were nothing important, a _distraction_ , even. A nuisance. He got crushes on attractive women all the time. It'd pass. They always do. Just a matter of a couple days, maybe a few weeks.

Maybe when they boarded the Enterprise again and resumed the Five Year Mission. Even at her breakneck pace, clearing through the tests and trials of the Academy, she wouldn't be nearly authorized to venture onto the Enterprise, on their mission, even if she wanted to.

He'd have to just let her go, then.

5.

Slouching was Jaylah's trademark position in any seat. She visited the Franklin for nostalgia's sake two days after their run-in at the Academy. Jaylah took the Captain's chair just as she had done before, while Scotty and two other volunteer techs reassembled a restored navigational panel. He caught himself looking over his shoulder in her direction often. He never caught her gold eyes fixed in his direction—why would he, anyway? He kept working, lingering around the repairs in the bridge longer than he needed, perhaps for the off-chance that she'd say something, _anything_.

"Ma'am, do you intend on helping or just sitting?" A tech asked, passing by the stoic visitor.

Jaylah looked at the young, female tech, but said nothing and continued to stare out past the viewing pane. Scotty quietly grinned at Jaylah's disregard for the exasperated tech, but that was the last interaction he'd seen Jaylah involve herself in that afternoon.

Perhaps in a bout of mental stammer, he'd mulled over something to say to her, to start conversation by, far too long. There were a million and one things he wanted to ask her about. What other music she loved—loud and disorienting, most likely—had she found a new favorite drink yet, was she enjoying Yorktown—what were her favorite haunts if she had any, yet? The list went on. Each time he had passed her by, he found himself more afraid to ask and stutter or jumble his words. When finally, he had enough courage to suck up the anxiety and go for it, she was gone.

Mentally kicking himself, he sighed with some disappointment. She slipped out of the Captain's seat and out of the bridge like a ghost, as quietly as she had snuck in.

He had to wonder if she missed this place at all—she'd loved "her house" and seemed thrilled when Starfleet announced they wanted to restore it, if only for historic sake. It would be a landmark at the heart of Yorktown, to mark the victory against their attacker. Like a brass statue in a park. Initially, Scotty thought, she would be overjoyed to see her "house" shined and glimmering in all of Yorktown's greatest lights.

However, the more she slipped in and out of the place like a silent specter, the more he wondered just how true that was.

A few more days passed.

He had been crossing through the corridors of the lower decks when glimpsed her silhouette through the open doors of the medical bay. In its once-ruined state back on Altamid, she had explained to him that the medical bay had mostly been her dwelling. Of all the residential dormitories on the ship, she was safest there, at the metaphorical sternum above the old ship's sleeping heart.

She wasn't there to admire its restored glory—Scotty realized, then, at the sullen aura about the woman, that she was saying goodbye to it.

Perhaps he could steal a moment to finally speak with her.

She spoke first.

"I barely recognize this place."

"She really cleans up nice, don't she?"

"I always wondered… what my house… _this ship_ , had looked like before it fell. I imagine it to being more like the one I lived in before. It is… much different."

The one she lived in before?

Well, of course, she had to have wound up on Altamid somehow, Scotty thought.

Jaylah was dragging her fingers gently over a panel on the wall, until a slender digit stopped over the viewing pane's shade system. Slipping the switch upward, the restored electrical system hummed to life and the shading that darkened the viewing pane as opaque as a wall went translucent. A window out to the hangar the Franklin was docked in. Further out, stars beyond the glass "snow globe" barriers of Yorktown. A small smile crossed her face. It was every bit as mesmerizing as she was.

A beautiful distraction with eyes like liquid suns taking in the sight of the universe around her.

"I am glad that I got to see the stars like this, from here, before moving on."

Scotty shrugged, "Well, Lassie, I think it woul'nt be surprising at all if ye somehow, uh… acquired this ship one day. In some way or another."

Jaylah laughed softly.

It was almost strange to hear and see so much pleasantry on her normally-intense face. But it was a welcome change. Oh, yes, it seemed—she smiled and she laughed, once in a blue moon.

"Not this one. I do not look back. Only forward… but… I would like to Captain a ship. Lead a crew. Explore. Learn."

"I think ye could do it. Ye'd be a great Captain."

Her eyes lowered. Her lashes were long, thick, and as black as the void of space itself. When they flit downward, all he could see in her eyes were pools of molten gold.

"You are… very sweet, Montgomery Scotty."

"Well, I'm not lyin' 'ere. I really do see ye becomin' a Captain one day. At the very least. Ye'r at least a hun'red times more capable than three-fourths of the cadets in Starfleet. I'd bet on'nit."

"Is this flirt-ery?" Jaylah said, causing him to freeze midway in his approach to stand beside her.

Scotty felt himself pale and the soft flutter of butterflies inside tickled away. He glanced sideward and sucked in a breath, trying to find some way to deflect the _very forward_ question.

"Eh… y'mean flattery?"

"Ah. Yes. Flattery."

A quiet laugh escaped him—some relief, and maybe a smidgen of disappointment. Yes. Just flattery. Scotty answered, "Well, it's sincere. It's the truth."

"I would prefer something else. I like the wiring and electrics of the ship. The wood that builds the home. I want to build it and repair it when it is injured. I want to be a part of the Engineering division."

That would be something. She would shine there, just as much as he knew she would shine on the bridge. Whatever crew was blessed with her would surely thrive. Whatever lucky ship would have her on board would be taken care of, lovingly. Wishful thinking was creeping its way into his mind, again—the fantasy of having her aboard the Enterprise, of seeing her every day. He wanted to scoff the thought away—relations with other crewmembers never went well, even Spock and Uhura had problems, for all the absurdities they'd lived through together.

Although, they _were_ still together, and they _were_ still, very happy.

Enough of that, he chastised himself, there was no point in dwelling on this entirely unnecessary crush of his. Perhaps his wires were just crossed. Perhaps he just admired her. Her mind, her quirks, her way with words and the way her native tongue sounded when he caught rare pieces of it. The way her eyes lit up when she stepped in to guide unknowing techs through the "veins" and "arteries" of her former "house" as if it had been less an object to her and more a companion.

That's all it was. Crossed wires. Admiration. Not a crush, just _admiration_.

She waved her hand and said his name, jilting him from his thoughts. He wasn't sure when he'd chased that rabbit of thought and left her stranded.

"I could see it, yeh, ye'd be a fantastic Engineer. Chief Engineer, I'd say. Any ship would be lucky to have ye."

Any ship—although he'd love for that ship to be Enterprise—any crew—although he'd love for that crew to be theirs. A slight prick of jealousy at the thought of her graduating the Academy with honors and top marks, being sent out on a mission with a different ship, a different crew, meeting some strapping young Engineering lad with a chiseled grin like Jim's or a physique like Spock's. Oh, most definitely, he'd be a distant memory for sure.

"I would like to be a part of your crew, Montgomery Scotty. You and I. We are a good team. I had not realized it until I had to learn to work with others in the Academy. They are not like you. You follow well. You lead well. I believe this word is symbiosis. I would like a symbiosis with you."

 _Oh, heck._

He inhaled, grateful that he was already leaning on a railing, otherwise he may have been literally beside himself. What _did that even mean_ , surely it didn't possibly mean whatever his jaded, gutter-prone mind wanted it to mean. She was talking about mechanics. She was talking about work. _Keep it professional._

"Well, I… ah… yeh, I… I'd… ye would fit in well. Ye already do. After everythin' we've been through together… ye're family to us. It'd be… I'd love ye—love to have ye accompany us. I… we're…" Sweating a slight drizzle he could feel his cheeks burning.

"Are you well?" Jaylah was moving closer, but in manner of concern as she took sight of the hot mess she'd rendered him in.

"I-I'm fine!"

"You have turned very… pink? Can you breathe?"

"I-I, yeh, ofc'erse, I'm breathin' jus' fine, Lassie, no need to worry!"

She was getting closer. Don't bolt away. Why was she asking if he could brea—oh, right, blue for her is the color of a flush, then… perhaps pink is a hue of asphyxiation? Was she really that worried? Her hand was reaching for him—oh, she was definitely that worried. He inched away and swallowed hard. _Heck_ , how could she make him so damned _nervous?_

"Might… might be catchin' a slight cold 'ere. That's just it. No worry, Lassie, I'm fine."

She tilted her head to the side, confused, but taking in the information carefully.

"I will be going, then. Have a good night, Montgomery Scotty." Jaylah said, before she left without another word or glance.

He exhaled and leaned against the railing. Reaching over with a lazy hand, he pawed for the viewing pane's shade and darkened it again. It _was_ getting on in the evening. Perhaps it was about time to turn in for the night and drink this stupid _crush_ away.

Perhaps that and the disappointment of knowing there was no way she could be approved to join their crew before the Enterprise was rebuilt and departed again. Not even with her smarts or talents, or even the fiercest recommendation from James Kirk himself. A Five Year Mission was a _Five Year Mission_ and taken damned seriously, they wouldn't just throw what amounted (in their eyes) to a trainee on board for their first long haul trek.

Well. They _were_ about half-way through with it, and there were always roster reorderings and reorganizings when they were stationed for repairs and resupply.

Best not to think further on it, Scotty decided—lingering on that little hope would just end in disappointment… and _heck_ , even if she _did_ make it aboard, he wasn't sure he could work so _symbiotically_ with her anymore. On Altamid, somehow, she was less of a distraction. Her presence in his mind was becoming less platonic with each passing day, each crossing of their paths, each accidental brush of their elbows or fingertips when reaching for the same circuitry.

Another two and a half years of it would only end in something good or lots of regrets.

Had it been any other lass, maybe the risk wouldn't feel like such a gamble he'd lose.

 _Heck. Heck, heck, heck._ Things were so much easier when she wasn't kicking down doors in his mind twenty-four-seven, blaring ancient rock music and stomping those big boots of hers.

The Enterprise would depart soon, with he and the rest of the crew on it. Without her. And it would all of entirely break his heart and he realized at that moment, that the slight downward shift of his plane of gravity had become that telltale, full-on _drop_. This one was going to hurt.

Let her go.

6.

The reconstruction of the Enterprise-A was a lot like Jaylah's race through the Academy's multitude of technical exams. Expedited, but not without care and caution. It never ceased to amaze him how much faster the Federation was able to turn out these ships. Each one took less time than its predecessor. When the automatons finished laying down the skeletal hardware and core connections, the hull was completed in a matter of weeks. Watching its progress from afar was about as romantic to him as watching an aurora borealis flare to life.

Once or twice, he caught what seemed like the ghost of Jaylah's presence not far away, watching the ship from the open, glassy corridors of Yorktown's structural labyrinth. She was often stopped, looking up at the hangars from a corridor two decks away, gazing upward with starry-eyes. She never seemed to notice him, but he always caught himself staring until she disappeared, back on the path she carved with heavy boots and a head held high.

With the life support systems completed, the Engineering crew would be assigned to assist in testing hardware and software, double-triple-quadruple-checking each system before the ship was given regulation clear for long-term journey.

That was always his favorite part—being let back on the sleeping ship, just mere months before she was woken up to get back to the stars. Keenser accompanied him and the rest of his reassembled Engineering team. There was a myriad of new faces and a painful reminder that many who had spent years with him on the previous ship were never to return. There were surviving faces that would see him in Yorktown's ship hangars, assisting from behind desks now, all of which he couldn't blame for being fed up with the wild shenanigans their beloved Captain seemed to pull them into. Enough was enough for some, it seemed.

Assembly automatons always did a well-enough job, but as per usual, paneling and bulkheads had to be re-examined and some wiring arranged in a neater fashion, one easier for less-precise human hands to work around. Scrawled detailing on the insides of the panels were always a barely-legible mess. Keenser growled that for being so damned capable, the machines could work on their handwriting.

Some software-based bug was grating on Scotty in the transporter room, while Keenser double-checked hardware configurations beneath the workstation.

"Still getting' a connections error, would ye jus' double-check that upstream cable alrea'y, it won't kill ya."

Keenser grumbled and climbed back under the workstation into a jungle of loosened cables.

"It's fine!"

"Clearly it in't fine, otherwise we'd have proper data flow. Cannae get the damned transporter workin' if we cannae get the damned operatin' system booted, Keenser."

Keenser asked if he tried turning it off and then back on again.

"It's a simple fix," Scotty grumbled, climbing down beside Keenser and shoving him a bit to the side. Keenser grumbled and shoved back. Scotty shoved again and said, "What kinn'a mess ye got goin' down 'ere!? Just… just get up there and check the operatin' panel."

Keenser signed and climbed back up. When Scotty heard tiny feet stepping on the panel, he barked, "Git down from'mer!"

Digging through the small tool container nearby, he fumbled with the disorganized mess of circuitry Keenser had left. The upstream cable wasn't anywhere _near_ where it was supposed to be. Resetting it back into its proper home, he called up to Keenser, "Workin' now?"

Keenser answered in the negative. Scotty rolled his eyes, "Try shuttin' it down and startin' it back up again."

When the system booted up again, he heard the tell-tale chime of the operating system making successful hardware-software detections and grinned. What the _heck_ was Keenser doing down here, playing video games? Before he could beam too long and make a smart-assed remark to his companion, an all-too-familiar error chime followed, as Keenser read back to Scotty from above, "Critical Device Error 721.35, upstream cable not detected."

"…iss'at right?" Scotty's tone was flat.

Keenser cackled. Ass.

"… _feck._ "

Back to square one, the problem was further into the wiring connections, probably in the component module further into the bulkhead. Disconnecting the upstream cable and taking a screwdriver between his teeth he climbed further into the gutted paneling, partly wondering just _what_ those automatons were being paid for. Figuratively, anyway.

"Did you try turning it off and back on again?" Jim's voice came. Scotty glanced down out of the bulkhead and saw the familiar boots and uncuffed trousers of Jim's uniform. The Captain took a seat casually in an open chair beside Keenser. He heard the crunching of an apple in his mouth. All of _too_ casual. What did he want?

Scotty took the screwdriver from between his teeth and as he worked to open the module, he quipped, "Ye want to come down 'ere and say that to the data net?"

A web of cables dropped unceremoniously in his face from within the module.

Scotty added a very flat, "… _Sir._ "

Jim was chuckling, "No, my friend, I can't say I really do. However, I did come in to run some roster reshuffling by you."

"Roster reshufflin'… welp, now's about the time to get the roster out'a the way. Cannae do much after we set out."

"Nope. No, we can't. So. I wanted to ask you your thoughts on taking up another trainee."

"For the remainder of a Five Year? Ye really want ta make this a regional occupation program, Sir? I mean, with our penchan' fer gettin' shot at, shot down, shot left 'n right, an' that's just diplomacy missions."

He picked out the tiniest, polished wrench in the toolkit beside him and worked at further opening the module. With its enclosure opening up, he could already see where the wiring bots had missed a couple of connections.

"Well, she's a capable trainee. I'd even say she's only an acting trainee. You and I both know she's more than capable to come along in the Engineering crew." Jim said. Silence followed, as Scotty paused— _"her", "capable", "come along"_ —another crunch of an apple. The small wrench slipped free of his fingers and knocked him over the bridge of his nose.

Half-stammering, half fumbling his hands in the dark for the dropped wrench, Scotty answered, "Is this 'she' a 'she' I'm thinkin' ye'r referrin' ta?"

"Well, I wanted to run it by you, first. By the time this ship departs again, after all the clears and regulation test-runs are completed, she'll be at seven months into the Academy's training—on paper, anyway. But her placement exams are putting her closer to the achievement level of a first-year complete. By the time she is at seven months in, by the time we leave, if she keeps up this pace, I could pull some strings for her, if she wants. See if we can't get her cleared for an acting-enlist role. Count it toward the rest of her units. Have her around again."

"Just—just so we're clear, aye, we're talkin' about, about Jaylah?" Scotty tried to keep composed, but just thinking about the possibility of her waltzing around the Engineering decks with her big boots and her confident-bordering-on-arrogant aura was like an unexpected blow to the nose. Or perhaps that was just the wrench falling on him, he couldn't quite tell. She had a way of knocking him off his feet without even being there, he noted.

"Well, she did repair an entire ship on her own. Granted, it was over the course of over ten years, she learned it all on her own, hands-on. Kind of gives me the sense she learns better by doing than by reciting what she reads in textbooks. I relate to that. I respect her combat prowess incredibly, on that note. She could bring great things to the crew. You two have excellent working rapport. What would you think? Having her on your team like that?"

Scotty sucked in a breath quietly and considered just how damned _distracted_ he was going to be with her around in the uniform's short skirt. It wouldn't have been the first time he got a crush, a _thing_ of sorts for a girl on the ship with him, but those breakups were always a nasty affair, one he'd rather not risk experiencing with Jaylah. And _heck_ , that was if she even saw him as anything more than some greasy nerd buried in wrenches and wires—it'd likely be _nothing at all_ , she probably barely knew he existed. She'd wind up fancying a handsome lad like Jim and that'd be the end of it. No distractions, no issues, no nothing.

"I think she'd be great, I'd love to have 'er, really."

"Same," Jim said, and Scotty could just about hear the grin on his perfectly-punchable face when he added, "…we could use another pair of great nacelles on board, if you know what I mean."

 _Alright_ , Scotty thought, _not alright._

He feigned an empty laugh and quietly murmured, "…and that's how Scotty became an alcoholic."

"Okay, you know you'd have said it at some point or another, man." Jim said.

"Well," Scotty confessed bitterly, "Yer not _wrong_."

Jim laughed and was standing now, taking his leave, "Well, spending so much time with her since we came back from Altamid, I guess I'm a bit hard-pressed to just move on without her. She feels like part of the family, now. It'd be like leaving her behind. I just can't do that. Not to anyone, not Jaylah."

Spending so much time with her? He quietly hoped it was in the company of others—perhaps Bones or Uhura or heck, even Spock. Scotty decided right then that he categorically _did not enjoy_ hearing about Jim spending so much time with Jaylah. Since when the heck did he get so jealous over a girl he barely knew? He kicked himself mentally—she wasn't even aboard the ship yet and she was already a distraction and he was already a damned idiot for her.

But Jim got what he came for—an okay from the head of the ship's Engineering division to bring Jaylah aboard in a role where she shined. She wasn't going to be a trainee for long, he already knew. She learned quickly and had the mental faculties that knocked the socks off of any human engineer on the roster. In some time, she would probably leave him in the dust as well. Leave him far, far behind.

When the workday was over with and insomnia struck, he found his way back into bar-hopping. A flicker of hope that he'd casually run into Jaylah was squashed under the echo of Jim's words in his mind, _"…spending so much time with her since we came back,"_ he wondered if Jim was luckier in running into her in bars than he was. It didn't matter, he reminded himself, he was used to drinking alone with Keenser didn't accompany him, he was used to being alone, it worked out best for him, it suited him.

The possibility of Jaylah working with them for the duration of their mission was a heavy weight on his mind that couldn't seem to just dissolve under the liquor. Two shots, two beers, another shot, more beer, she was still _there._

She was burned into his memory, staring up at the rebuilding of the Enterprise, she was _still there_ , eyes shining like gold stars, she was _still there_ , fresh in his mind, sitting alone with glistening tear streaks crossing her pale cheeks. Hell—she was _still there_ , all of _feral_ in the wilderness of Altamid with her staff, her traps, and molten golden in her fiery eyes. That was before he had the slightest clue he could even trust her not to kill him on sight.

Here he was, drunk and stuck on a problem he couldn't solve, trying his damndest to disassemble and reassemble her in his mind when she had all of done exactly that to him, without even lifting a finger.

This was _not_ a good idea, falling so hard and letting her linger around—he couldn't dismantle the admiration he had for her even if he wanted to. The idea of her drinking and laughing the night away with Jim barely pulled a wire out of place.

"Damn it," Scotty murmured into his beer, "…I am fucked."

Maybe it was just the dawning realization that the shots were kicking in, hard.

It was the night before a "weekend" (in civilian regard,) and the hazy walk back to his residence had luckily not left him as the only idiot drunk tumbling through Yorktown. Bars were loud in the south side of town and parties were held, birthdays celebrated and hangovers raced toward at high velocity. Everyone was out and about, couples hand-in-hand, enjoying the "night sky" as the base lowered its artificial lighting to keep the illusion of night and day.

His route always brought him passed the reconstruction of the Enterprise, and every time, he stopped or at the very least, glanced its way, even days after the outermost hull was completed and it slept proud in the 54th South Hangar. The lighting systems were being tweaked and perfected by the "nightshift" technicians. He could see some flickering in the ten-forward's panes. Scotty watched it for a long time, before he realized a much-craved for presence was nearby, watching it as well.

There she was, out of the Academy reds and in casual attire. He'd seen her casualwear a few times, noting the edge to her style that matched her rough and tumble personality to a tee. Form-fitting, but not intentionally sexy. Modest, bearing little glimpse of arm or leg under long, dark sleeves. Her face was always so straight, stern and with purpose. At first glance, he knew, no one would ever expect a grin or cracked-joke from her, but he'd been around her long enough to catch those rare moments and see just how bright she could shine when her roaring music rattled walls and she pulled those around her into clumsy dance.

She was a star that shone so much brighter than anyone knew.

She was looking at him, then, expression all of unreadable. He wasn't sure how long he'd drunkenly let himself stare like a git before she finally spoke.

"She is almost finished." Jaylah began to smile as she gestured back up to the ship with a nod, "…she is much bigger than my house was."

It took him a moment to comprehend that, before a laugh escaped him, "Aye, she's definitely in a class of 'er own. Well, not particularly, as they're both actually _Starship_ -class, but the diff'rence only _starts_ at the warp core and then there's a cooling system for the power network that would make the Franklin's development team absolutely _green_ with envy—"

Jaylah nodded, grinning as she eyed the ship, "Keeping warp nacelles from overheating, a common problem with the Franklin and the pre-NX ships. The deflector system alone would make me cry if I had created the Franklin. But that is the process, isn't it, to create a ship and then to create a better ship, learning from the previous ship's shortcomings."

She had made her way closer to him in more ways than one, as she leaned against the railing and stared out at the Enterprise. He wanted to look back at the sleeping beauty before them both, but he was fixated on the way her eyes glittered when she admired the Enterprise out loud.

"…I once got caught in the hydro-cooling system of the last Enterprise."

Jaylah turned to him with a tilt of the head, "…how did you end up in _there_?"

"Well," Scotty began, trying to figure out a way of explaining a certain time-displaced Vulcan ambassador, before he decided to skip to the end, "…kind of a transporter mishap."

"A starship's cooling system is a poor place to go swimming, Montgomery Scotty," Jaylah smirked.

Her calm garnered a laugh from him and he nodded, "Well, this is true."

Fixing his gaze back on the ship, he mulled over something to say, _anything_ , if only to keep her interest a moment longer. She beat him to the punch, however.

"James Tee asked me this evening if I would like to work with the crew aboard the new ship. He said that you would like to have me."

Praying she hadn't taken that last bit out of context in her typically _Jaylah-literal_ way—not that it would have been a lie—Scotty answered quickly, "Oh, aye, aye, of course! Ye'd be a great member of Engineerin', I, uh, I honestly couldn't imagine it without ye, really. After Altamid, ye'know, after all this time,"—all of Jim's supposed time with her, he thought bitterly, only able to count the evenings he'd shared with Jaylah on one hand—"…ye'know, the good Captain, he was really pushin' ta have ye aboard, as part of the crew, if we can get ye cleared by the Academy."

"James Tee is enthusiastic about everything." Jaylah said calmly, "…almost too enthusiastic. But he is a good leader. I have much respect for him. If I can be back on a ship, I would be happy."

 _Back on a ship_ , she had said. It got him back to wondering just how much she knew about ships before the prison that was Altamid came into her life.

Drunk, and without much of a mental filter, Scotty asked all of far too casually, "Where did ye learn ye'r way arounn'a bulkhead like that, anyway? Before Altamid."

At _"before Altamid"_ he was certain he'd felt the air drop a few degrees and saw a slightly paler shade come over Jaylah's already-ivory complexion. The slightest part in her lips and the subtle, but sudden inhale told him instantly he was stepping on something he shouldn't have.

"I lived on a ship before…"

She looked as though she were trying her hardest not to trail off. Jaylah took another breath and continued, keeping her chin high, "…I was born on a ship called _Mol-komma_. We were… ambassadors of sorts, for Reedolla and the _Arivnet N'fai-Tuh_. It was a sort of union amongst planets in our local systems, with pursuit of knowledge. Sciences. My mother was a translator and my father, an engineer aboard the _Mol-komma_. I spent more time in space than I ever did on any rock. Child or not, we all worked to keep the _Mol-komma_ functioning. Knowing how to heal our home's injury, it was a matter of survival."

"…so ye… ye ever been to yer home planet?"

"Redolla is not my home, Montgomery Scotty," Jaylah said, her lips curling in a smile as she gestured outward, past the structure that held them in Yorktown, "…that is my home."

Quiet as she was in that moment, beaming and looking out to the stars, she was like deafening music that rattled him to the very core.

"I'd like to visit my home again. Soon."

"Come wit'us, on the Enterprise. I mean, if ye 'adn't already decided to come along."

"Yes. I would like this. _Verra_ much."

Scotty laughed.

7.

The seven months of reconstruction were drawing to a close. In that course of time, he busied himself with less bar-hopping and more focusing on getting the Enterprise ready to resume the mission. In that time, he saw less of Jaylah, perhaps in the mild hopes that stepping away from her would let that bothersome _crush_ die down a little.

Bones had mentioned off-handedly that she wasn't drinking herself into a stupor anymore. She stayed in those days, buried in books and technical manuals. Scotty couldn't help but feel a bit proud of her for that. She had more reason to drink "the edge" away than anyone he knew. Instead, she was working hard for something greater. He envied her resolve.

Test runs were all successful and issues left by the wiring bots were resolved. Hardware to software system snares were rightly _unsnared_. Any and all technical fuckups were happily _unfucked_ , and the ship was just a day shy of a week from scheduled departure. The particular day stood out to Scotty—all last-minute arrangements being sorted by their superiors and mission outlines were wrinkles to be smoothed out.

"She did it." Jim was grinning ear to ear when he crossed paths with Scotty in the Enterprise. Technicians around them were hurrying to do last-checks and fix any remaining door-glitches that the software specialists had overlooked (and doors were always the bane of last-checks.) He'd done well enough the last few days to busy his mind with something other than Jaylah, but there Jim was, coming in to mow all those efforts down.

"Did what?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Jim walked with him, hands folded behind his back, "…let Keenser know I was right, by the way. Knew she could pass the exam."

Of course she could pass the exam. She'd grown up in ships. He wondered if Jim knew that.

"So she'll be joinin' us fer sure, then?"

"You bet, Mr. Scott—and I've got a favor to ask you."

"Favor? And what's that, Captain?"

"Uhura and a few of us, we figure… why not show the newbie how to celebrate a little? Welcome her into the family. Formally. At the Scarlet Vision tonight. 2100. She doesn't know."

He was never one to turn down an invite to a party. But he found he was decidedly nervous at the prospect of trying to invite her out with him anywhere. What if she mistook it for a date? What if she figured out just _why_ he got so damned nervous around her? What if she simply didn't want to come out that evening? Why _him_?

"If ye can forgive me fer askin' Sir, why me of all people?"

"Well, if I asked her to come out with me, it'd seem like I'm asking her on a date."

 _Whywoulditseemlikeadateifitwereyou_ —Scotty laughed off the thought and feigned a grin, "It probably would, wouldn't it?"

"You're a good friend," Jim said, giving Scotty a pat on the shoulder, "…and you're the first one of any of us who was a friend to her. I feel you would be the best to bring her to a surprise celebration. Poetic, maybe."

That was that—the Captain had a way of giving orders that were followed, even informally like that. After the day's repairs and fine-tuning were completed, it was Scotty's task to convince Jaylah to come out to some bar he'd heard namedropped repeatedly but had never quite been to. Sounded a bit busy, perpetually.

At least there was some solace in the fact that the Captain and the others weren't adverse to the same parties they were this time last year. It seemed that Jim had been growing more solemn and serious with time. Bones never hesitated to bring up the Captain's annual existential crisis that was his birthday. Just the thought of that brought Scotty some mild amusement—if he had an existential crisis every time he thought about his age…

"Who is it?" Jaylah's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, coming from the comm-panel beside her apartment door. Scotty straightened up, fumbling between sticking his hands in his pockets or folding them behind his back. Didn't matter, the door was still closed.

"I, it's… uh," Scotty mentally kicked himself for stammering right off the bat like that, "…Scotty. You busy, Lassie?"

There was an uncomfortable pause, before she answered, "Come in."

The door clicked and slid open with a soft whir. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting at the thought of Jaylah's residence. Perhaps he'd imagined it to be a bit sterile and barely-used, given that she was always training or studying, or otherwise bar-hopping her way through Yorktown. He was partly right—the residence looked unfurnished and barely used.

But glimmering in the dim light of wall-lamps and whatever filtered in from the night beyond the window, there were some kind of hand-made streamers. Corded trinkets strung across the ceiling, reminiscent of the oddities he'd seen when the Franklin was her abode. Things he'd mistaken in the past for some kind of handmade décor were here again, some small personalization in the form of bottlecaps and circuit pieces wound about like tinsel on Christmas tree.

Letting the tips of his fingers brush over one streamer of bottlecaps, an amused grin crossed his face. He recognized these bottlecaps from all the beers she'd ordered. It didn't surprise him one bit to see what she'd done with each and every one she'd acquired. The girl drank like a beast. It'd have been a damn shame not to be a bottlecap collector.

Looking around her lounge a bit more, he found other small trinkets, including a piece of old machinery from the Franklin. An audio-system, complete with a panel she'd reassembled and cleaned up… and apparently wired into the recreational sound paneling system. He wondered if Bones could hear her blasting music at odd hours of the night.

A few more treasures around caught his eye—sitting over a stack of _Constitution_ -class technical manuals were small metal models of 1:24 vehicles to a 1:600 and another 1:350 scale Enterprise. Each little project was in varying states of completion, where another larger model sitting on the kitchen area's table was as large as 1.5 meters in width alone.

"What are you here for, Montgomery Scotty?" Jaylah's voice came, stepping out of her bedroom and into the lounge area.

"Oh, wow, these are cool… ye've really been studyin' the ins and outs of the…" Scotty's words were caught on his breath when he turned to see Jaylah placing a completed model of the Franklin on a shelf among several other Federation ships. That alone wasn't startling by any means—no, what really caught him utterly off-guard was the fact that she'd come out so casually in just a pair of trousers, with no top, not even an undershirt of any sort.

Bolting back around, as not to be caught looking he said quickly, "…ins and outs of the ship, that's brilliant, aye, ah… well, I'm 'ere to ask if ye were busy, maybe wanted, to go out somewhere, ta celebrate?"

Was she not aware of the whole topless with guests around faux-pas? She had to be. She was walking toward him now, he could hear her soft steps and was doing his best not the let his eyes linger on her reflection in the mirror-backing of a nearby shelf. Damned be his best intentions, however—he looked.

Jaylah looked confused, eying him carefully before she picked up a book from a nearby countertop and asked as she thumbed through it, "What is a… oh. Celebrate. A party?"

Looking up from the dictionary in hand, she said with a confused expression, "Has someone died?"

"Died? What? Nae, nae, a party—a party to celebrate your exam, your accomplishment."

Jaylah considered this and nodded, "…you… celebrate accomplishments. This makes sense. This is favorable. Yes, I would like to go to a celebrate party. Why are you turned away like this?"

"Well," not mincing his words, Scotty answered, "…it wouldn't be right, yer not decent, I-I try to be a gentleman?"

"Is this not custom?" Jaylah murmured aloud, before he saw (in the mirror's reflection) her features become a bit irate, "…James Tee said it was normal."

 _I'mgonnabreakhisnec_ —Scotty laughed, "Haha, ha… oh, haa, aye, that… that James Tee, he's… he's a funny guy, every once inna blue moon, aye, he's still got those pranks up his sleeves…"— _gonnabreakhisneck_ —"…he, uh, came by here?"

"Yes, he and Miss Lavigne walked me home a few times. He said, the best thing to do when you get home is to throw off all your clothes and get comfortable."

 _Oh, thank god._

"He has a very nice chest. What is the word… it is chiseled?"

 _I'mgonnabreakhisneck._

"Welp, Lassie, I cannae comment on that one, but, ah… that's… that's good to know, fantastic."

"There is a hot pool two floors below. We all had quite a fun evening there. But I am still confused about the nature of undergarments, nudity and swimming garments. Do we cover chests or let them be? And the rules are the same within residences? Strange!" Jaylah said, crossing past him into her room, she was thinking aloud now, "…when we swim here, we do not swim naked, we have clothing to swim in, that others can see, but similar clothing we wear _under_ our primary clothing, we do not allow others to see. It is very confusing."

"Ahh, aye, ye'll… ye'll get the hang of it," Scotty said with a nod, feeling how hot his cheeks burned. He could still see her topless form moving about her room as she searched her wardrobe for something to wear. Jaylah's form was lithe and, perhaps it was coincidence enough to use the word, _chiseled_. Her shoulders and back muscles were adorned with the same symmetrical black markings that patterned her face. Down the curve of her hips and the dip of her back, these lines etched paths over moonlight-pale skin like conductive tracks on a circuit board.

She turned, then, eyes fixed on something across her room, out of sight. He couldn't have looked away from the heavenly sight if he'd tried. Petite musculature, an abdomen like some kind of athlete and—he turned his head quickly when she looked back in his direction.

"Get the hang of it… slang is strange, Montgomery Scotty. But I understood that," her voice gave the hint of a smile as she spoke, "…strange, strange, turnings of phrase… I would like to know them."

"Well, I'd be happy to teach ye everythin' I know, Lassie."

She stepped out of her room now, having slipped into a black dress with a short skirt and long sleeves. Under the skirt, she wore tight black leggings and had slipped into a pair of boots he'd not seen her wear before. It wasn't formal, but in Jaylah's fashion, this was her rogue sort of fancy. Her hair was down and free, not bound by her usual black band. She stopped a few steps shy of him and looked up at his face, her expression pleasant, somehow a bit softer than he'd seen before.

"Good. I have questions. Let's go," Jaylah said, taking his hand and leading the way to the door. Her hand was small and soft and her pull was so strong and purposeful. He nearly stumbled over the coffee table to keep up with her. But out they went, down the halls and into the corridors that made of the "roads" and paths of Yorktown. And oh, questions she _did_ have.

"First, explain to me the shirt protocol," Jaylah began.

"Shirt protocol?"

"As I understand, the circumstance to take off your shirt is only in residential areas and when swimming?"

"Well," Scotty began, trying to wrap his head around the question (which was still very much out of sorts from the eyeful he'd just been graced with.) He thought about it and then explained, "Well, eh, if-if ye'r …intimate with someone, ye kin walk aroun' naked if ye wanted. In ye'r hoose, I mean. People dannae take it too kindly when ye walk around naked outside. Uh, lads tend ta throw their shirts off for any damned reason. Lassies, a wee bit more conservative about it?"

"Why is that?"

"Well…" Damn it, how was he supposed to answer that? He had only just caught up to her pace when he said, "…I guess it's an intimacy thing?"

"Strange. What is intimacy?"

The realization dawned on him then that for all the studying and cramming she had been doing, her focus must have been almost entirely on technical machinery, physics, and sciences. It made sense. For all the racing through the courses she'd done, she must have just barely skimmed over the basics of interpersonal and psychological sciences.

Spending fifteen years in isolation on Altamid must have made the topic somewhat irrelevant and uninteresting to her.

"Right, so, ye'r kinna leadin' the way 'ere, do ye know where we're even goin, Lassie?"

She stopped and as the realization dawned on her, she grinned and she began to quietly laugh. Jaylah shook her head and apologized, "Forgive me, Montgomery Scotty. I was so excited. I… became ahead of myself."

He stared for a moment, half-blank, half-mesmerized and then could not help but laugh with her.

She was excited to go out? Taking him by the hand like that, rushing out… asking about intimacy… he couldn't just be getting hopeful, could he?

"Where _are_ we going?" Jaylah asked.

"Oh, ah… the… the Scarlet Vision. Ye ever 'ear of it?"

"Yes, this is where James Tee goes with Mr. Sulu and Chekov. They are there often. Perhaps we may run into them?"

"Heh, who knows?" It would have been nice to find out she'd be so excited to come out with him sooner, Scotty decided. Some place where they _wouldn't_ likely run into Jim or the others. They used to wind up drinking alone together so much just months ago—to think, just a couple of months ago, he had no clue that she would delve so deeply into his mind without even trying.

She was going to step into the Scarlet Vision and see the others and they would be there, all of them, waiting for her. Her new family. He wanted to see what kind of smile crossed her face then.

"Even if we don't, I believe we will still have a great celebrate," Jaylah said, smiling still, "…I have missed drinking with you, Montgomery Scotty."

Straight for the heart.

Fighting off the urge to maroon the others in the Scarlet Vision and just go carry her off to a date alone with him, he lead the way, "Well, let's get the party started then, Lassie. I'd say we've got some shots to catch up on."

"But no chasings."

"No chasings," Scotty repeated, grinning like an idiot.

She took his hand again. A tiny spark of static electricity on her palm zapped them both and she pulled her hand away.

"Sorry!" Jaylah said, keeping up with his pace.

"A bit of static never killed anyone."

She glanced sideward, before taking his hand again and following, "…a bit of static."

"A wee bit of static."

"A _wee_ bit." Jaylah repeated his words, his dialect—he quietly adored when she did that.

"It happens all the time." God almighty, he was on cloud nine. He had butterflies like a schoolboy.

"Where I am from, it is," Jaylah scoured her mind for the equivalent word and said, "…good luck?"

Good luck, huh? He never was a guy with much luck. Any luck would do; any luck was good luck.

"What is luck like, where you're from?"

They were passing by the ship hangars, where the Enterprise was docked not far from where they were. Just a short distance ahead they would take a lift to a higher corridor, and from there, the Scarlet Vision was not far away, in a recreational district of bars and restaurants. The lights from that district shone like gold stars not too far from where they walked.

"That is a good question. I never believed much in the luck my parents spoke of. But they said that luck is sometimes what brings us happiness… or keeps us alive. They believed too much in luck."

"Well, for what it's worth, there might 'ave been a bit of luck to landin' where I did… back on Altamid. Y'know, if I 'adn't abandoned the Kelvin Pod when I did, I wouldn't even be 'ere. What a day that was."

Jaylah's expression softened as she followed him, "…you've never mentioned that."

He shrugged, "Never put much thought into it, really."

After so many near-death experience following on Captain Kirk's coattails, he found himself dwelling less and less on those pleasantly unpleasant moments in life. Truth be told, Scotty realized, he hadn't ever thought of the beginning of his chapter on Altamid as the moment in the Kelvin Pod, ditching it before it tumbled off of a cliff.

 _God, just how long had I been weaving life around the moment I first saw her?_

That realization was a tad sobering. He wasn't sure how much he cared to dwell on it—the idea that he had been steadily falling for her just minutes after nearly falling to his death. Heck, that couldn't possibly be the case. Maybe he just blocked out a less-than-favorable memory was all. Right, that had to be it. He had a crush, but he wasn't crazy about her.

"That is a good way of leaving the past behind. There is little need to keep with you the things that give you fear. Only what comes after. What makes you stronger." Jaylah said with a small nod.

Heck, that little nod to accentuate her point was _cute_.

He was so distracted by her face that he only realized too late that the lift's door had closed with three other people already inside. A mild disappointment that they would have to wait for the lift to return… but not so much a disappointment that he got another small moment with her before the party began. Before they conveniently ran into "James Tee" and the others.

Silence fell over them as they waited for the lift to return. A couple sitting on a bench together were kissing rather loudly, hands exploring one another's legs, thinking they were under the veil of enough shadow not to be noticed. Jaylah looked their way with a tilt of the head.

"Strange. That is… how you…" Jaylah made a very confusing gesture with her fingers.

He couldn't have made heads or tails of that if he tried.

"Huh?"

"How you…" Jaylah shrugged and changed the subject, "…does that happen in public?"

"Oh, oh—nae, well, ah… that… that's not… wait… what?" Flustered, Scotty pressed the button to the lift again as though it could make the thing come faster. He was getting red in the face again.

"We cannot have nudity in public… but procreation—"

"OH! Oh, nae, that's not… that's just…" Scotty tried to find the words. The couple had stopped and started giving them both odd looks. Jaylah was staring back at them, as if in challenge. Gently guiding her around by the shoulders, he said, "…just, just give them their privacy. That's, ah, that's not… that's just an expression."

"That is not how…?"

 _How the heck does she—_

Drawing in a heavy breath, Scotty was grateful for the lift's arrival and its door sliding open as he shook his head and said, "Nooo… no, no, no, no—that's just something couples do when they're, ah, very enthusiastic about one another, and, ah, think they're alone. Unless they're Spock and Uhura. In that case it happens anywhere they damn well please."

With a scoff and half-laugh Scotty added, "In't that somethin', though? Little bit of irony."

"Forgive me, I still have many questions," Jaylah sighed, "…particularly about, being close to people."

"Right. Intimacy. I get that."

"That is intimacy?" Jaylah confirmed.

"That… aye, that was intimacy." Scotty nodded, trying his damndest not to be caught in her stare.

"It looked nice. James Tee does that often, with a lot of women. I did not understand the exchange at first, but it makes sense now. He is full of much kindness."

Scotty was trying his hardest not to laugh.

Kindness.

Well, that certainly was a word for it.

The lift ride was quiet, save for her presence beside him. Her hand had somehow found its way back into his. Scotty couldn't have asked for anything more. As odd as her way with words was, her way with customs and interactions, nothing about this evening seemed strange in the slightest. Hardly that. Only exciting and amusing. For all the oddity, he felt as if he'd been sleeping through dates with other girls in comparison— _date_ , it wasn't a _date_ , he was just _walking_ with her to the party.

Of course it wasn't a date.

Of course it wasn't… was she looking up at him? He looked her way, quickly, her attention was on something else, beyond the glass paneling of the lift. Must have been his imagination, his wishful thinking. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he swore he caught her staring—and again—but no, she was looking elsewhere now. He couldn't make heads or tails of her.

Once more—looking back again, she didn't turn away, and instead, pointed out past the glass paneling and with a bright smile said, "…is that my house?!"

The Franklin was restored fully, now, and had taken up a new home on display at the heart of the Westford Park. The largest park in Yorktown, home to a number of historical monuments from different planets. He'd heard there was a proposal to keep it there for a time. He'd been every bit supportive of that proposal himself—he could not stand to see such a beauty kicked back into a hangar to rust.

"Oh, wow. That is. I di'n't think Langley's proposal to 'ave it there would go through!" He grinned perhaps just as brightly as Jaylah.

Polished and clean, the Franklin truly was a petite beauty suspended over the park's lake. A monument to the battle it had won. The sight was beautiful and brief, as the lift reached its destination level and the door whirred open. A few passengers were already filtering in when the two of them made their way out.

Again, he found her catching his hand in hers—another spark of static electricity garnering a noise of surprise from the two of them. It was odd—he hadn't imagined her to be the hand-holding sort. She seemed like the sort who didn't care for physical contact in general.

But there she was, the soft flesh of her palms becoming as familiar to him as an old lover.

He had paused, and didn't realize just how lost in thought he'd been before Jaylah tugged his hand and said, "…where is this Scarlet Vision?"

"Oh, ah, right this way."

Did she only hold his hand for him to guide her in a direction? That had to be it. There was practical motive between their contact, nothing more. When he pointed to the building and its lit sign not far down the road, she released his hand. Of course, it was just for guidance.

Nothing more.

When she was a few steps ahead of him, she stopped and turned back to him. There was mild confusion in her gold eyes as she asked, "Are you coming?"

"Ah, aye, aye, ofc'erse!" Scotty feigned a smile. Jim and the others were waiting for her. It would very quickly go from just this moment, the two of them, to Jaylah and _everyone_. There was nothing wrong with that—he loved the thought of everyone welcoming her like this. But… somehow, a very selfish thought was creeping into his mind. Perhaps to suggest some place else, to steal her away.

She took his hand again, just as she had done in her apartment and lead the way.

He would follow her to the edge of the universe if she took his hand like that.

The Scarlet Vision it was, then.

They entered the bar—their timing was right, 2100, just as Jim had said.

He glanced around looking for the others. Where were they?

"This place is loud!" Jaylah shouted over the music with a toothy grin, "I like this!"

Happiness was perfect on her.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the Academy's new wonder girl!" A familiar voice called out to them—Jim, followed by Uhura, Spock, and Chekov. Not far behind, he saw Sulu and his husband, Ben Sulu, both wearing party-hats. Ben waved to them. Sulu started laughing for some reason known only to the two of them.

"Glad you could make it to your party!"

Uhura hugged her tight, "Congratulations, sweetheart. We're so proud of you."

Jim's arms were around Jaylah in a welcoming sort of embrace. Scotty slipped into the background without complaint. He did what he was asked, and it was all Jaylah from this point on. She looked around at them all, surprised, and then back at Scotty. He shrugged and smiled.

Jaylah was happy, though—and he could think it once and think it a million times over, happiness was perfect on her.


	2. 08 - 15

8.

 _On a cobweb afternoon, in a room full of emptiness_  
 _By a freeway I confess, I was lost in the pages_  
 _Of a book full of death, reading how we'll die alone_  
 _And if we're good, we'll lay to rest_  
 _Anywhere we want to go_

Of course, Scotty wasn't one to slip into the background at any party, especially when drinks were involved. Jaylah was happy, and when Jaylah was happy, she was like light—utterly radiant. He followed her around just as everyone else in their small group did, sharing a toast to her success and even partaking in Jim's drinking games, challenging her limits (where hers were by and by far superior to many of theirs—although it seemed that Keenser kept up with her just fine… Scotty figured he should have known.)

 _In your house I long to be, room by room patiently_  
 _I'll wait for you there, like a stone_  
 _I'll wait for you there, alone_

Pool and dart games, and somehow, a beaming flushed Sulu had started singing "Happy Birthday" to her—and although it wasn't anywhere near her birthday ( _when was her birthday?_ ) it managed to get half of the bar chiming in. Everyone was quickly plastered, but there was no better way to drink the evening away.

 _On my deathbed I will pray to the gods and the angels_  
 _Like a pagan to anyone who will take me to heaven_  
 _To a place I recall, I was there so long ago_  
 _The sky was bruised, the wine was bled_  
 _And there you led me on_

Uhura had pulled Jaylah up to the karaoke machines (cue Chekov informing Jaylah, "…did you know zat karaoke vas invented in Russia?") and at first, Jaylah stood there with a look of genuine confusion as Uhura sang the words to songs Jaylah did not know. The tides turned quickly when the next song came on, Jaylah's choice, and she was rapping to the rock ballads of _Rage Against the Machine_ and roaring alongside _Metallica_ as Uhura conceded karaoke defeat. Jim seemed to be the only one who could follow along with Jaylah when she picked out songs.

 _In your house I long to be, room by room, patiently_  
 _I'll wait for you there, like a stone_  
 _I'll wait for you there, alone, alone…_

His heart was in his throat when she picked one— _and he knew it_ —and gestured for him to join her. Heaven above, her taste in music was _ancient_ , but he knew of Audioslave, he could tell what music she liked. Truth be told, it wasn't far from his favored genre either. She beckoned him, and he shook his head, even though Jim and Bones were drunkenly nudging him, encouraging him to join her. He refused—he couldn't possibly do karaoke, he _hated_ karaoke, if only because he _hated_ everyone looking at him, hearing his screeching attempts at singing—and eventually, they stopped nudging him.

 _And on, I read, until the day was gone,_  
 _And I sat in regret, of all the things I've done,_  
 _For all that I've blessed, for all that I've wronged,_  
 _In dreams until my death, I will wander on_

Eventually she shook her head and laughed it off, giving up on trying to convince him.

Scotty wasn't drunk enough _at all_ to have joined her. Maybe a few more shots in, when he was certain he wouldn't remember everyone's reaction to his singing, he may have joined her. She took the stage on her own, and she sang in perfect pitch with the lyrics. Of course it'd be perfect—she'd spent the last fifteen years with this as her only music.

 _In your house, I long to be, room by room, patiently_  
 _I'll wait for you there, like a stone_  
 _I'll wait for you there, alone_

Jaylah radiated the kind of ephemeral light that a shooting star gave off—fiery, burning through everything in their path, leaving a trail of lights and unspoken wishes in its wake. After all of the games, the roaring laughs and deep embraces, all of the announcements to the galaxy itself from their beloved Captain that Jaylah was with them—that she was family—only then, did Scotty have a brief moment of passing lucidity. Some mild regret, at not taking her hand when she reached out to him to join her.

 _I'll wait for you there, alone, alone…_

The party went on well into twilight. All the drinking challenges Jim had been cocky enough to challenge Jaylah to paid off—he wound up being carried home, leaning on Spock, with an amused Uhura following after. She was shaking her head in the way she often did at Jim's antics, her long black ponytail wavering behind her. Chekov was out cold with Bones lingering over him with his medical tricorder, muttering some metaphors that had something (loosely) to do with alcohol poisoning. At least, he thought that's what Bones was talking about—sometimes the only one following those metaphors was Bones himself.

Sulu and Ben had checked out a bit earlier in the evening (after casually kicking everyone's _asses_ at two-versus-two pool—reigning champions, those two) mentioning that they had to see their daughter off for school the next morning.

Soon, as the party wound down, there was only he, Bones, Keenser, and Jaylah—and somehow, he'd managed to pace himself well enough not to pass out in the men's room again. Certainly, however, he was seeing more than one Jaylah at any given moment. _Drink it off._

"God, man, you think you should give your liver a damned break? If you were any redder, I'd think you were a tomato taking a Sunday stroll in August." Bones scolded.

Scotty shrugged, "Aye, wee clipe, 'n yer bum's oot the windae."

Bones eyed him for a minute, as if trying to translate that meaning, before he sighed, "…that makes a lot of sense."

With a firm slap on the shoulder—Scotty winced and mouthed, _"Ow! The 'eck was'sat fer?"_ —Bones stood and took his leave, nudging a sleeping Chekov at another table, "Alright. You guys are on your own. Jaylah, encourage him to drink _a lot_ of water and get some sleep. Stabilize your blood sugar levels and I wish you all a good night. Or morning."

Pulling one of Chekov's slender arms over his shoulder and all of carrying the leaning, sleepy Russian boy out, Bones muttered, "Come on, now, kid, easy does it."

Slamming his emptied glass down, Keenser announced, "I fold."

Hopping down from his bar stool, he hobbled out after Bones and Chekov.

That left only he and Jaylah, who still did not seem even remotely as drunk as anyone else.

 _Maybe_ , Scotty thought, he was just _maybe_ drunk enough to say a fragment of the things that had been on his mind since the minute she crashed into his life. Or was it he that crashed into hers? It wasn't very clear. She had quite a _crashing_ effect, no matter where she went. She had sat beside him, still throwing back drinks with a smile on her face that was utterly _beaming_ with happiness. He caught himself staring at her, grinning back, like an idiot.

"W'at a party that was."

"I think that I like parties. I like this family." Jaylah said, grinning ear to ear.

She was so damned beautiful when she smiled. Her head turned back his way, pausing momentarily. Thick black lashes, impossibly long, darkened sleepy gold eyes.

 _No way._

He squinted, leaning in closer.

She mimicked him, giggling under her breath.

 _No. Way._

She leaned closer, squinting her own eyes.

"…nae way…"

"What?"

"Y'er completely lit," Scotty couldn't help but laugh. She was entirely plastered—and he lived to see it.

"I… I am not _lit_." Jaylah shook her head, taking another swig of her beer, before asking, "…what is _lit?"_

That reaction only amused him further. She was in denial. Definitely intoxicated.

"Alright. I think ye've 'ad enough, now," Scotty reached over and commandeered the beer remaining in her glass. It slipped free of her fingers easily as she watched him with more amusement than indignation and tempting fate, Scotty rather defiantly chugged the rest of Jaylah's beer. Placing the glass hard on the bar counter, he looked her in the eye, waiting for her response. A very clear challenge.

"One more round." Jaylah said.

"One more round." Scotty agreed.

And another round they had, laughing together over the way Spock had reeled Jim in more than one time through the evening, particularly, the one pool game that the Dynamic Sulu Duo didn't partake in, where Cupcake from security showed up and threw a tantrum over losing. Jim was more than ready to tempt a brawl, even after all this time.

"Heck, he would've donnit if Cupcake 'adn't backed down—Lord knows Starfleet'll forgive the guy f'er anythin'!"

"Cupcake, that is the big man from Security?"

"Aye, temperamental, big fella, but he's actually pretty good at tellin' yer horoscope. Might be a psychic, that one. Really scares me sometimes. He once told me somethin' like… what was it, there was a Mercury Retrograde and I was gonna 'ave one hell of a week fer it, somethin' like," Scotty mimicked Cupcake's deep voice and upright posture as he spoke, _"Well, man, you've got Virgo and Gemini all across the chart, so when a Mercury Retrograde happens, you're fucked for about two, maybe three weeks straight."_

"What happened then?"

Scotty shrugged, "Well. He wasn't wrong. Warp drive malfunctioned several times in three weeks, Keenser got one of 'is acid-colds and sneezed titanium-eating snot all'over me control panel, took out me favorite coffee mug with'it, sprained me wrist, got a concussion hittin' me 'ead when the ship stalled out of warp one day, ladyfriend dumped me—for Chekov—somehow—and then when I thought it was all over, Cupcake tells me," again, Scotty mimicked Cupcake, _"…hey man, I think that Mercury Retrograde passed. You doing alright? I worry about a guy with a lot of Mercury in his chart during those weeks. Hope you're doing alright. Hey, just a heads up, Mars is gonna be square Libra in a hot minute here, so don't pick any arguments. Good luck, brother."_

"What did that even mean?"

Scotty gave an exasperated shrug, "I dinnae. I dinnae. But two days after that, I got in an argument with someone in the ten-forward and was _thoroughly_ punched out. Square in me bloody 'ead. I was out like a light. Cannae remember _why_ it happened, I was really drunk at the time, but… I… I think it had something to do with a tribble."

"How could someone be so unlucky?"

"Be me?"

Jaylah laughed and then she nodded, "…be you. That is a start."

Still smiling, Scotty let his head hang for a moment. Yeah—being him certainly is a start, regarding bad luck. He was tempted to suggest another round of drinks. But when he glanced up, he noted the sleepy, half-lidded look on Jaylah's face and thought against it. She wasn't even bobbing her head to the rock music blaring from the unattended jukebox anymore—lyrics ringing out, _kneelin, lookin' through the paper though he doesn't know how to read, oh, prayin', now to something that has never showed him anything_ —instead, Jaylah was nodding off.

"Y'look ready to sleep, Lassie."

Jaylah nodded and yawned, "I am ready to sleep."

"Alright. Let's get you home, then… I mean, er, if, if ye want me to, uh, walk ye home again?"

"That would be nice. Thank you." Jaylah said, sleepily throwing her arms over his shoulders.

 _Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies, oh he don't know, so he chases them away…_

Scotty froze for a minute, his heartbeat catching in his throat, static electricity tickling the nape of his neck where her hands moved around him. Her breath was hot against his chest, slow and steady. His eyes slipped shut, all of too comfortable with her small frame heavy and warm against his chest. Letting his arms slip around her with awkward motion, he wasn't sure whether this was some kind of hug or hint that she wanted him to carry her home again.

"Montgomery Scotty…" Jaylah leaned up and whispered his name against his collar, he could feel her grinning, "…thank you… for landing in my life."

Scotty couldn't fight off the hint of a smile as he answered quietly, her hair like soft, white silk threads against his lips, "…well, ta be fair, I landed about eight 'undred meters from yer life… more like… tripped an' fell the rest of the way… think I'm still fallin', really."

 _Someday yet, he'll begin his life again  
Oh, whispering hands, carry him away_

"Still falling?" Jaylah's sleepy voice asked.

Scotty nodded, growing a bit braver, letting his fingertips trace down across the black markings on her shoulder blades, exposed by an open-back dress. Heavens, she probably had these lines all across the entirety of her body. Sucking in a breath and letting his eyes shut—his heart was pounding—Scotty answered, "Aye… definitely still fallin'."

"Me too." Jaylah murmured, her body falling limp.

 _"Me too?"_

Jaylah was out cold. In his arms. What was _that_ supposed to mean?! Did she mean falling asleep, or…?

When she started snoring quietly, he glanced around and realized that, yes, she probably definitely meant _falling asleep_. He also realized that he should probably get her back to her apartment. Luckily, the walk from this place wasn't anywhere _near_ as far as the walk from the last bar she passed out at. Scooping her into his arms, he carved his own wavering path through the bar. Luckily, he'd sobered up enough not to be walking-into-walls drunk.

Although he did, accidentally, bump Jaylah's head on the edge of her apartment door when they arrived, _"Ah! Fack! I am so, **so** , sorry!"_

He cursed under his breath and apologized profusely, even though she just grunted and took little notice.

Navigating through the hanging, bottle-cap streamers (and knocking over one small model starship on a waist-level shelf) Scotty managed to get Jaylah into her bed. She had a mildly cute, mildly frustrating way of clinging to him when he tried to set her down. He wasn't sure if she was tugging at him or just clinging in a state of sleep. The idea of falling asleep beside her was all of _far too inviting_ , and he was pretty certain she'd be less than thrilled to wake up next to him the next morning. Managing to unravel her arms from around his shoulders, he caught himself lingering over her. She was too damned perfect; she would never let him get away without at least _one_ broken bone the next morning if she caught him there.

Still. Time had a way of stopping when he was this close to her.

If he had his way, he would steal a kiss and whisper a "good night" in her ear.

But it wasn't his way.

Letting his fingertips brush soft, stray strands of hair from her face, he watched her for only a moment longer before leaving her room. Luckily, the model she had placed on the shelf hadn't been roughed up too much in its tumble. He picked it up—it was that model of the _Franklin_.

In any other timeline, he'd look at it with so much less regard and appreciation. It would be just another ship—a beautiful one, one he'd have loved to set foot on, at least once in his life, sure. But there wouldn't be a single memory with it he cherished.

It wouldn't be attached, so deeply in his mind, to the girl with circuitry markings across her body and electricity in her very veins. Funny enough, it was, in space, there really was no such thing as _falling_ —just a pull, a current that swept you up in whatever slipstream carved its way around. Of course, that wasn't minding the whole freezing and being ripped to shreds or irradiated— _falling_ in space was categorically _not the business_.

But there he was.

What would happen first, ripped to shreds, asphyxiation, freezing?

Bones probably had a metaphor for this.

With a sigh, he set the model _Franklin_ back down on the shelf and made his way out of the apartment. By the time he reached the door to his own apartment—mostly emptied, save for the boxes of his few belongings and half-finished junk projects he'd take onto the Enterprise with him—the sun was rising. Luckily, he didn't have to be out and about for at least… three more hours.

It wasn't uncommon to meet up with her again in his dreams—although it was obviously not the real Jaylah. Just a figment of his imagination and wishful thinking.

That night (or rather, those small hours on the borders of moonset and sunrise) brought him at least the seventh dream he could recall, where she was there, waiting for him.

Odd enough, it wasn't the usual fare, dreaming about a beautiful woman. Not the sort of impassioned, hot romp in the sheets that a typical, attraction-induced dream entailed. Far from it, actually.

Jaylah showed up in his dreams, at first like small fragments, flickers of images interspersed with other random, dream subjects. Schematics and numbers, the metal skeletons of starships, the chemical formulas that built the ever-molting, radioactive exoskeletons of stars. Scattered amongst disheveled images, sometimes she would be there, like a shadow at first.

A shadow of Jaylah, sitting alone across the bar, one leg swinging lazily under her seat. More numbers. Physics. The first dream had held a conscious effort _not_ to think about her, to ignore the fair ghost bobbing her head to music alone, tapping her fingertips on an emptied glass.

Ignore it. Let it go.

A sliver of light crossing over Jaylah, the shadow gradually lifting, Jaylah running, Jaylah's fists and small, but lethal knuckles punching away at her sparring partners. Jaylah being knocked down and leaping back up to her feet effortlessly. Jaylah glancing his way, only for a moment.

Ignore that as well, let her go.

Like an eclipse steadily passing, Jaylah walking through the glassy corridors of Yorktown, bathed in light, her uniform the only color in a monochrome image—scarlet. Her eyes glancing up at him through long, black lashes. No, there was one more color, there was gold, gold like her eyes.

It was becoming impossible to ignore—trying to let the black hole decay was only proving that the heat only rose with entropy, until it burned away every last particle.

9.

The next time he saw her was on the day of the Enterprise's departure, standing at attention amongst the other members of the Engineering crew. They stood in salute, as per custom, and he _was_ never one for so much formalities. Chief of Engineering, Lt. Commander, sure, but he loathed to run the place like a military operation.

"At ease," Scotty sighed, and the crewmen and techs dispersed one by one to their stations. He was trying his best to keep himself looking busy, occupied with the checklists, sign-offs, last-checks and triple-checks of the ship's each and every function. It felt good to hear her engines roaring to life again and smell the scent of machinery, oils, electricity on the air. This was more a home to him than any apartment on Yorktown. Heck, probably more than any place he could go back to on Earth anymore.

Keenser had mentioned that Jaylah was to spend her first day on the Engineering decks shadowing—but that lasted all of fifteen minutes before she wandered away from the communications database technician she was shadowing and took more interest in working alongside technicians with more advanced duties. A smirk crossed Scotty's features when Keenser told him that.

"I cannae imagine 'er shadowin' anyone long. She'll be more than a cadet quicker than ye know, Keenser."

Keenser shrugged and waddled off. Looking up from Keenser, Scotty caught sight of her, looking over the panels and working beside the more seasoned technicians as though she'd been there all along. Of course she would. This wasn't her first ship. Nor was it her second. He believed her when she said she'd grown up on a ship. He believed the idea that she was learning how to be a part of a working machine as young as fifteen, maybe even sooner. She didn't move like a newbie at all—he quietly wondered if she held some kind of rank or occupation on her first ship, before Altamid.

The techs beside her looked at her with curiosity and intrigue. They were listening to her, naturally.

She _had_ to have been an officer of some sort before Altamid.

All of this was just retracing old steps for her.

The Enterprise departed from starbase Yorktown as planned. Not a single hitch. In the Engineering decks, they often blared music while they worked, keeping their hands busy and the systems running smoothly. Everyone's music came on, but he found his spirits lifted just a bit higher than usual when an utterly _ancient_ rock song blared—beats, shouting, _Jaylah_.

The uniform fit her. The same red tunic of an Engineering technician, although Jaylah opted to wear the long black sleeves and leggings under it, as some of the smaller technicians tended to—those tiny girls who were always cold. Part of him wondered if Jaylah was a perpetually-cold sort of woman, or if she simply didn't like showing all that much skin. She'd hated the short skirts of the Academy uniforms. It must have been a modesty thing. The leggings were cuter on her anyway.

She smiled at him when she walked by—at least, it seemed, she wasn't upset at him for leaving her the other night. Heck, she probably appreciated that. He would have, had he been in her boots.

"Mister Scott. We've got some door glitches." A voice came over the intercom—Uhura.

Scotty sighed. Well, no launch was ever so perfect.

"Which deck?"

"Well," Uhura said, exasperation in her voice, "…Officers' Quarters seems to be having the glitch. I'm stuck in my room. Door functions are intermittent. Apparently the cargo hold entryways are completely out of commission, too."

"Heck," Scotty sighed, "…alright, Uhura, I'm sending some help yer way, hold tight."

Catching Keenser as he crossed by, Scotty said, "Keenser, yer with me. We've gotta fix the cargo hold's entryways."

Keenser was cackling—he'd made a bet earlier that the doors were going to glitch again. The doors had glitched frequently in the test runs, and he'd been so damned certain that they'd glitch again. He wasn't wrong.

"Yeah, yeah, yuck it up," Scotty grumbled. Everything was going smoothly enough for him to take a moment to address those doors. The cargo hold's entryways would be enough of a damned nuisance for everyone on board.

Keenser called two other techs to join them—one of which being Jaylah, telling her, "Come along. You'll want to know how to fix these damn doors!"

"Does it happen often?" Jaylah asked Keenser, following not far behind as Scotty lead the small group.

Keenser was chuckling, "Always with these damn doors."

She was definitely coming with them. It was all definitely really happening, Scotty noted, feeling the same butterflies at the sound of her voice as he'd felt in the bar with her days prior. This was going to be the remainder of the long haul and she was coming with them. Damn it all, not even a few hours into the mission and he was already distracted, trying his damnedest not to glance back at her, not to overly eavesdrop on her conversation with Keenser. This was not the time nor place for distractions.

Odd enough as it was, he'd never _once_ been so damned distracted. The minute his baby—the Enterprise, blessed be her shields, armament and beauty—needed him, girls fell off his lap like an afterthought. This was different. And that was terrifying.

The team split up at the lifts, one heading upward for the residential deck and the other half of the group following him down to the cargo hold. Just as expected, the malfunctioning of the locking mechanisms had caused some minor mayhem amongst cargo's personnel.

"Alright, alright, I'm 'ere, step aside," Scotty sighed, making way for the locking mechanism's paneling as Keenser went for the operating screen for software diagnosis. Jaylah helped them unscrew and disassemble the paneling to the hardware under the paneling when Keenser confirmed it was another upstream cable undetected error.

"Heck."

The web of wiring in this panel was categorically more cramped than he was used to in the locking hardware. Scotty gaped at it for a moment, realizing this one door was the _only one_ he hadn't had the privilege of disassembling during the test phase. Of course it'd wait until launch to start glitching out. Just as well, _of course_ , the damned circuitry cases were at least ten times smaller in this ship than the last.

"When the 'ell did they start making the locks so _tiny_?" Scotty grumbled, reaching in. Jaylah and another technician were working at the mirroring panel, adjacent to them. Turning to the tech assisting him, Scotty said, "Right, you and Jaylah. Switch places."

"Yessir." The tech said, crossing the hallway over to Jaylah.

Jaylah looked at him and then at Scotty. When she was beside him she glanced into the bulk of wiring and circuit boards. He didn't have to say a word—she was in and working on it with much smaller, nimbler hands. Perfection.

"Oh, thank god, ya _get it._ " Scotty laughed, "…yer gonna go far, kid."

Jaylah made a scoffing noise and he caught a smirk on the corner of her lips.

If there was one thing he should have known by now, after years of doing this, it was that upstream cable connection errors _were never about the damned upstream cable connections_. The problem was always a very particular set of misaligned powerstream modules further into the backend of the operating panel, which, from the look of things, was going to require them to tear out even more of the paneling and get further into the bulk. _Heck_.

Jaylah and her long arms and small hands could only reach so far—Keenser kicked Scotty after catching him staring as Jaylah bent over and delved further down into the wall. The entire process was about two hours in by the time they reached the powerstream modules. The door managed to open, but now it wouldn't shut. There was a problem, now, with the closing functions on the other side. Following Keenser, the other two techs stepped into the cargo hold and over the next hour and a half they whittled away at the problem. Without Jaylah's suggestions, it'd have easily been twice as long.

Her suggestions came off like intuition. He may have caught himself a tad envious there—she was communicating better with his ship than he was.

 _Tell her your problems and she'll solve each and every one,_ he thought to that darling ship, the Enterprise.

The rest of Day One saw them getting to the bottom of the door mess, but there were still numerous other doors coming up glitched as the day closed. Week One saw, luckily, only small problems popping up, aside from the doors and an occasional powerstream failure to the ten-forward's lighting and refrigeration systems. When the Captain began his away missions—their first tasks were always diplomacy and establishing rapport with the civilizations they encountered—the shuttlecraft often came back with "minor damages" for which they were there to repair.

10.

"The thing about Jim and these shuttlecrafts, it's like loanin' him the keys to yer car—ye think, _Oh, maybe this time, he won't bring it back in multiple pieces or with bulletholes riddling 'er undercarriage,_ except… nae. Every time. Every damned time." Scotty said from beneath a near-gutted shuttlecraft.

Jaylah, beside him, tugged at a steel arrow that was embedded into its frame. She looked at it through thick goggles and tilted her head in curiosity.

"…he does not regard Prime Directive much, does he?" Jaylah said—they always worked to the tune of her music—her music was so rapidly becoming _their_ music, and she seemed to know of everything he'd forgotten or simply never heard of. He enjoyed every roaring, screaming, gritty track. As loud as _their_ music was, he could always hear her so clearly through the beats and the shouting.

"Well, I think he tried, I do think an attempt was made." Scotty said, looking over the arrow through thick goggles of his own. It wasn't of _terribly_ primitive design, but it was a wonder the thing had stuck on the small vessel until it docked.

Jaylah slid out from under the shuttlecraft and tossed the arrow into the pile with other debris they'd pulled off of the shuttlecraft and back under she went, beside Scotty, working at the smoke-blackened machinery.

"Yannoe, he could… do us all a favor, and maybe, for just a minute, _not_ get himself into life or death situations. Just for, say, oh, about a day or two. Must be some kind of adrenaline junkie." Scotty said.

The light attached to his goggles illuminated casing and bolts under a wire and metal mess. He worked to unfasten a bolt and was decidedly _not_ succeeding. Jaylah paused what she was doing and her light swung his way as she said with amusement in her voice, "Do you need a hand?"

"I… Nae, Lassie, I got it."

Jaylah watched him struggle with it a moment longer and then asked again, "…are _ye_ sure?"

Well, when she said it like that he couldn't tell her no. He looked at her and she shifted closer, reaching over to the wrench. Together they managed to turn the stubborn bolt, until it turned free. The force of the bolt finally turning without resistance had inadvertently landed Jaylah partly against his side, over his arm. He hadn't realized just how cramped these quarters were, or just how soft her body was, tumbling down on him. He sucked in a breath, trying his best not to make it obvious that she was making him nervous again.

Oblivious to it all, Jaylah slipped back to her place and the rest of the disassembly was smooth sailing.

"I'd like to join James Tee on an away mission sometime."

"Join him? I'm sure when the want for a technician comes along, I can recommend ye…" Scotty said, quietly wishing he hadn't said that. Away missions with Jim were almost always dangerous. Not that he didn't trust her to hold her own—heck, she was a _warrior_. Keeping her to Engineering was almost a waste of her combat talents.

She was a warrior. Just like Jim. An adrenaline junkie. Just like Jim. She liked loud music and shouting and heavy beats just like she liked her presence to carry that same kind of thunderstorm—just like Jim. He hadn't realized how much his mood had slipped when his mind lingered on that. She was every bit perfect for _Jim_.

"Do you accompany him on away missions?" Jaylah asked.

Scotty scoffed, "Nae. I'm just… just a tired old nerd in Engineering. I don't fight. Cannae even run a mile ta save me life. I don't break things, I fix things."

Finishing up the seal on a small wiring box, and fitting it back into place, Scotty said, "…I'd be a wee bit useless."

He leaned over to the toolbox beside him before making way to the next wiring box. He heard a loud thump. Startled, Scotty jumped and looked back to see the wiring box had been literally punched out of its seating by Jaylah's balled, gloved fist. She looked at him with a very stern, almost angered expression. He wasn't sure if he was terrified or turned on by that, in all honesty.

"You are not useless, Montgomery Scotty. Ever." Jaylah said.

"…thanks fer that. Ye broke it again, though."

"Then fix it."

"…but _you_ broke it."

Jaylah grinned, then, the tension between them melting as she laughed, "…I did."

Scotty nervously shared that laugh, before asking, "…so… _yer_ gonna fix it, right?"

Jaylah didn't fix it. Not that he really minded. When they finished up with the shuttlecraft for the time being, they were spotted in oil and grime. Jaylah took off one thick glove and wiped a sheen of dampness from her pale brow. She had looked at the shuttlecraft for a long time, standing there. There was a myriad of thoughts going through her mind, he was sure of it.

She was looking at this shuttlecraft like she'd fixed it once before, as if in another life. As silent as she was, the melancholy hanging over her was loud enough to pierce their music. Only then did he realize that there was no longer any background noise behind their music. They were alone in the hangar. Scotty hadn't heard the other crewmen and mechanics leave or finish up their own shuttlecraft repairs. Perhaps, emboldened by that moment of being alone with her, he sought to ask, finally, "…ye've done all of this before, 'aven't ye?"

Jaylah still eyed the shuttlecraft in moody silence.

Finally, she said, "The design is similar to the auxiliary crafts of the _Mol-komma._ Structurally, there isn't a lot of difference, either. My brother and I often repaired the ship's small crafts like this, together."

She had a _brother?_

"I have… good memories of ships like these," Jaylah said, hesitating before she added, "…I think."

"I think any pleasant memories with yer family are good memories."

Quietly, Jaylah said, "Yes. They are good memories."

Washing their hands and scrubbing off the oil and dirt from the repairs, Scotty ventured to ask Jaylah, "Ye said ye had a brother… what was he like? What was your family like? If ye don't mind talkin' about it."

Jaylah grinned in a way that showed teeth—particularly the sharp, fang-like canines where human cuspids and premolars normally were, "…my family… my father was an Engineer. I followed him everywhere around the _Mol-komma_. Mother was always partaking in diplomatic conferences. Very busy. She was a translator. When training for the _Arivnet_ began, my brother and I chose a path of machinery, like our father."

She dried her hands and her voice was softening as she reminisced, "…my father was a very serious man. But sometimes, he made Kier and I laugh. He would always look at a damaged shuttlecraft and say: _This is not broken!_ And… it would be worse off after he touched it—and he would step back and put his hands on his hips, and he'd look at my brother and I and sigh: _…yes. It is broken._ "

They were walking together now, and he urged her to continue. Jaylah was doing that thing again—that thing where the happiness shone in her eyes like small lights.

"My brother, Kier, would bicker with Father so much. Then I would bicker with Kier. The three of us would be bickering on what needed to be done—tackle the powerstream first, the datastream, or take the hull apart further and check connections. Connections would be fine. Kier would say, _I told you!_ And the operations system would continue to reboot itself and Father would say, _Kier, this is your fault_ , and sometimes… sometimes, I found a torn up piece of the powerstream system, remove it and say, _I fixed the problem!"_

"Did ye fix it?"

Jaylah shook her head, still grinning, "…I found at least seven other problems we needed to fix. Kier would look at me with his eyes big and he would say, _Jaylah, just put it back._ We had to fix it, though. Everything had to run. It had to fly. Every problem must be solved."

Something about that notion lingered on his mind—uncovering one problem only to discover several others. Maybe it resonated with him. He knew precisely what his one problem here was, and perhaps the aversion to it came with the knowledge that there would only be a downward spiral after. But she did say it rightly—every problem must be solved.

They parted ways to continue working elsewhere. As much as he would have loved it, they did not spend every waking moment side by side. She was still technically a trainee (although she was so, _so,_ overqualified for such a title) and he had the grand old job of keeping the ship's heart beating strong and healthy, one day at a time.

11.

Quiet days, sometimes quiet weeks passed. Keenser teased Scotty often, "Don't call _me_ in there with you. You get it done faster with your other half."

"The 'eck does that mean!?"

It was true, however—she matched his pace and sometimes solved problems far faster than he did. It was getting harder by the day to justify assigning her menial trainee's tasks. She belonged at the heart of the ship, right where he, Keenser and his best technicians worked. Eventually, there she moved, working beside him, walking beside him—"Commander's new aide?"—"She's not an aide, she's an engineer."—and she was all the brightest fire he'd ever seen. She was all fanged grins and cocky confidence, tools in hand, not giving a damn how dirty, cramped, or dangerous the job was.

Occasionally, a major repair called all of Engineering together to keep the ship from tearing itself apart from the inside. His poor beauty, _his_ Enterprise, Jim seemed to steer her into the most reckless of situations and scenarios with little regard for how she felt. Even Jaylah was gritting her teeth at times.

"He wants us to put her _where?"_ Jaylah said, sitting beside him as Chekov informed them over the comms that Jim was going to land the ship in an ice field on Idibas-12. Now, this wouldn't have riled Engineering much if the sleet and hail on the planet were, in their regard, _normal_ water. Except, no, not on James Tiberius Kirk's watch—it had to be a bloody atmosphere of _frozen salt._

Scotty palmed his tired face and said, "Captain, it is… my expert opinion that ye _do not land the ship in a frozen, salty hailstorm._ "

"She's going to have to bear it, Mister Scott—we have no Shuttlecrafts large enough to transfer the ore reserves to Idibas-9. It'll be quick. Promise."

"You know what that salt will do to the hull, Captain?" Jaylah said.

"We've got experience with that, Jaylah. Trust me."

Scotty sighed and shook his head, murmuring to her, "In case ye 'adn't noticed yet, Lassie, when he says _'Trust me'_ he means get ready for extensive repairs for the next two 'er three weeks."

"I'll get the EV suits ready." Keenser grumbled.

Jaylah sighed, running her palm over the border of an operations panel gently, "…my poor house."

"We're only two months in," Scotty said, "…just wait 'till he starts gettin' bored."

The look of concern on her face—for the ship—was rather priceless. He certainly felt like, just maybe, he _hadn't_ been utterly mad all these years for giving such a damn about the ship, particularly in Jim's reckless hands.

"Do not worry. We will fix you…" Jaylah said quietly to the ship, patting the panel before getting back to her assigned task. Scotty couldn't help but be a wee bit amused as she muttered in the way he often did during his first weeks aboard the Enterprise.

Walking away, she muttered, shaking her head, "…always breaking our house!"

12.

Jaylah always seemed happy enough just to be in the Engineering decks, working alongside the rest of the crew. However, Scotty could tell she had far more energy to burn than routine repair and maintenance tasks took out of her. When her scheduled duties were completed, she spent the remainder of her time on the sparring mats and in the gymnasiums, challenging anyone up to her ferocity. Fighting was a pleasurable past-time for her.

Bones had even commented on it, one evening he caught Scotty watching her take down Cupcake repeatedly (they were going on best three out of five—he had yet to tear her down.)

"I can't help but watch how she moves and wonder how long she's been trained to do this sort of thing."

"Ye think she was trained to fight like that?"

Bones scoffed, "Oh, of course. You don't just, come outta the womb knowing how to land a flying scissor kick to the skull like that. Well, maybe unless you're a Klingon, but— _oh, oh, no_ —you ever take a good look at a capoeira fighter and you know that's years, _years_ of…" Bones winced and Scotty inhaled sharply as, down on the sparring mat, Jaylah landed three heel-strikes on Cupcake's jaw with what Bones said was some kind of _helicóptero_ kick. Bones was pulling out his tricorder when he confessed, "Doctor as I may be, I have a fondness for martial arts. Not that I'd ever break my neck doing it, myself."

Cupcake made the mistake of remaining on his feet after that (though swaying on wobbly legs.) He was out cold after one of Jaylah's roaring cries and a double-leg kick to the neck. Half of the small crowd who'd gathered to watch their match winced. Scotty couldn't help but grin madly, proud of her agile strikes and unshakeable grace. Bones whispered in mild awe, "Ohhh… that was definitely an _armada dupla…_ "

"A what?"

Bones shrugged off Scotty's question before he stepped in to check Cupcake's vitals as their referee stepped in to call the match. It wasn't going to be best four out of six. Cupcake was _out_ for the night. Knowing the two of them, they would be back on the mat the moment he was well enough, unless he wasn't reprimanded for being so damned reckless in training, letting himself get banged up like that. Jaylah and Cupcake had an odd friendship like that—he'd initially not "wanted to hit girls" but after taking up Jaylah's challenge the first time, they seemed to have a very deep respect for one another. It wasn't as though Jaylah won every time, either—he'd been met some mornings with Jaylah covered in bruises and sore to the bone, but she was always grinning, and always, she would tell him, "Sparring was good. Everyone had a great time. You should come. Join us, Montgomery Scotty."

She was concerned for Cupcake, but Bones was quick to reassure her, he was fine.

"Take it easy next time, darlin'," Bones sighed. Scotty wasn't sure if he was saying that to Jaylah or Cupcake.

He hadn't realized when Jim slipped into the crowd, watching from a safe distance. He wasn't taking to the mat or even to boxing like he used to. As of late, Scotty heard, Jim didn't show up—but when he did, it only ever seemed to be to watch Jaylah fight. He lingered like a shadow, clapping for Jaylah, but never quite making his appearance known. When he was found out and the crewmen stood at attention—"Captain!"—he'd have them at ease and watched only another short round before disappearing again. He grinned that picture-perfect smile for Jaylah and she called out to him to join, but he refused. Then, he was gone.

Scotty knew exactly what he felt on the day that Jaylah finally joined Jim and Bones for an away mission. She had been asking about it frequently—and he'd passed the word to Jim plenty. That wait hadn't been for his lack of trying. He knew she could kick ass and take names out there. Had she not been a part of Starfleet, he could see her fitting in well on some military organization elsewhere, where she would actually get her boots on the dirt and lead an infantry all her own. She was every bit brawn as she was brain.

"It's not safe," Jim had said over drinks with he and Bones in the ten-forward.

"I prefer her in Engineering with you, Scotty." Jim had said, walking through brightly lit corridors on the outskirts of the Engineering decks.

"She's not Security. I know she can fight. But I don't like the idea of taking her along, this might dangerous one coming up." Jim shrugged, before disappearing into a lift.

But finally, in fact, just a mere week after that eventful K.O. of the near and dear Lt. Cupcake, perhaps Jim finally decided Jaylah was ready. He'd expected himself to worry about her when she was away, but he reminded himself continuously—she was more than capable, more than able to handle herself if things got dangerous.

Several away missions came and went across the course of the next few weeks. Some being longer stints than others. Routine sorts of missions, exploration, science, observation. Luckily none thus far were Jim Kirk's trademark variety of "fun" but they brought Jaylah back unscathed and he was happy.

Scotty tried not to make it obvious that he saw her off in the transporter room before every leave. He always did his best not to be as transparent as glass there—no lingering gazes, no heartfelt good lucks, nothing of the Spock and Uhura variety. Just excuses to be there, pretending to streamline the transportation process and get them to the target point as smoothly as possible.

Her eighth away mission provided a small anxiety attack. Small being the understatement of the year.

It was a routine cargo delivery mission to an outpost on the planet Harziel.

"Another easy one!" Jim assured the team.

And, of course, the stakes were never so low and easy when it was Jim taking up the mission—no, it had to be damned near abandoned when they arrived, only to have the whole away team lose communications for several hours.

For several hours, he paced, panicked, tried to take over the transporter interface to locate them himself, failed, and proceeded to pace, panic, and pace some more.

Of course, he'd been at his wits end two hours in, trying to get them to re-establish comms with the team, trying to get a lock on them.

That was the real test of faith there—trying not to seem nearly as frayed at the seams as he was when Jaylah was in danger. He had to show more confidence in her, he knew, and so he did. As best as he could. Luckily, he realized, the entirety of the crew knew him to be neurotic enough in general to simply see his overreactions as normal fare.

Finally, blessedly, the comms reconnected and he had never been so glad to hear Bones.

"Mister Sulu… you're not gonna believe this," Bones's voice came over the comms-line, with what sounded like a roaring auditorium in the background.

The next part of Bones's announcement didn't help Scotty's worried-sick fears in the slightest, "…this planet is inhabited by _gladiators_. They have Jim and Jaylah. They're making them fight the other captives."

 _Gladiators?_

Scotty had dropped his favorite tea cup when he heard Jaylah's telltale war cries in the background.

"…you can tell Mister Scott to relax. Jaylah's doing fine."

Doing fine.

 _Doing fine._

Alright, then, doing _fine_.

Keenser gave the slack-jawed Scotty an elbowed nudge in the side, "…she's fine!"

"Jaylah's down there, with swords, and spears, and they're making everyone kill everyone—I… _I am not fine!"_

Keenser shook his head and waved him off, getting back to work.

When they finally got a lock on the team's position and beamed them back, Scotty was the first one to rush to Jaylah's side. She was clad in archaic armor matching Jim's. She still held a bloodstained sword in one hand. Blood was streaked across her armor, across her face, some of it red, some of it blue where she'd been wounded, but she was sweaty and her chest heaving with quick breaths and part of him wondered if running straight for her like that was a _bad idea_.

She and Jim both were enthralled with the love of the fight, and even though they'd all just narrowly survived that escape, they mirrored one another's roars of victory and bumped shoulders like a pair of brothers who'd just thoroughly _smashed_ some arrogant git into the ground. For that moment, they were all cheers and war souls, more at home in a gladiator's armor than a Starfleet uniform. Bones and the two security officers who had joined them looked considerably _less_ enthused about skirting the gladiator's pit and more relieved to be home on the ship.

"…and _that_ is how you take down seven armed Roman soldiers, non-lethally." Jim announced.

"They weren't Roman soldiers! Heck, these weren't even gladiators from Rome, we weren't even in Rome! Don't ask me _how_ to explain any of this, but, heck, dammit Jim, this is very _high up_ on the list of weird shit I've seen this month." Bones barked, "…and 'non-lethally' my ass! Do you know how many femurs and necks you probably broke!? And that, that giant… that giant half-rhinoceros, half-tribble they threw at us all, I don't think that thing's gonna make it to Sunday school after the poking Jaylah gave it!"

 _Rome? Half-rhinoceros, half tribble?_

"Well," Jaylah confessed, voice still breathy, "…he is not wrong. The monster and the snake-headed she-demon gave a good fight. Her ancestors would be proud. But we are all alive."

 _Snake-headed she-demon?_

"…and that's the most important part." Jim nodded, walking past Scotty with a casual gait.

It was just another away mission for Jim, and Jaylah fit right in.

Bones was helping the others back to their feet, happily accepting a medical officer's spare tricorder and setting course for the medical bay. Jaylah turned to a very tired Scotty, oblivious to it all, still high on adrenaline.

"Are you alright, Montgomery Scotty?" Jaylah said through her crescent-moon grin.

He shrugged, feigned a laugh and lied, "Aye, fine, just fine!"

"This was… everything that I needed." Jaylah beamed, "…thank you for convincing Jim."

Scotty wasn't sure it was _he_ who convinced Jim. Perhaps it was those nights watching Jaylah fight Cupcake and kick him around like a punching bag that finally convinced Jim. Maybe it was the memory of Altamid that convinced him.

He walked with her out of the transporter room, as Bones encouraged her to head "straight for medical to get a thorough evaluation." Jaylah was limping, ever so slightly. He saw the lower end of a gruesome gash, perhaps from a sword, slicing its way from just below her knee up across her thigh (obscured by the armored skirts of the gladiator's suit.) A deep, cerulean trail leaked down from the wound, streaming into her boots. She walked on the wound like she barely felt it.

Hell. She was _bleeding,_ she was _injured_.

She walked on it like it was nothing. He thought to offer to help. Jaylah made it clear she didn't need his help, though. Or anyone's. She walked ahead of him, silver ponytail swaying in her wake.

 _Let her go._

13.

After that mission, Jaylah became a staple member of away teams. Getting her to stick around Engineering as she'd been assigned was like a game of tug-of-war with Jim, who'd found his favorite new adventuring partner. Scotty wasn't one to argue it. She thrived. He couldn't argue it if he wanted to.

Part of him had thought, _"Oh, good, maybe I can finally get a break from this madness."_

Except, it hardly worked that way at all. Even when days away would pass and weeks at a time could go by without him seeing her, she lingered in his dreams. Lingered in a way where he dreamt that he was working in the Engineering decks, going about the routine maintenance of the day, and she would be there next to him. Lingered in the way where she would work beside him, keeping up with him, running laps around him, coming to the conclusions he couldn't think of. Lingered in the way that she often did—when she was _really_ there—pausing with tools in her hands just to stare in his direction.

Did she have any idea he'd noticed that out of the corner of his eye? Did she ever have any idea that he was too nervous to look back at her? Or that it was her staring that made his hands fumble or made his tools slip from his fingers?

She lingered in his dreams in the way that it was easy to forget she wasn't actually falling asleep beside him every night—dreams were always wishful thinking, weren't they?

"In dreams, it can feel like you've woken up next to that person forever. That's why it's so jarring when you wake up and they're not there. Never there in the first place. Makes you wonder if you've lost your love-damned mind," Bones had shrugged, at the tail end of a conversation in the arboretum.

Cautiously, Scotty had been sure not to mention that the "someone" in his dreams had been Jaylah. But no matter how much he skirted her name, he had a sense that Bones could diagnose the exact cause of all his symptoms. Maybe at this point, his playing along with the vagueness of it all was just pity.

"Ya ever experience it?"

Bones snorted as he scrawled notes on some kind of botanical herb project in his tablet, "…the ex-wife."

A pause, before Bones gave a weak chuckle, "…aw, hell… I haven't thought about her in years. Thanks for breaking down that steam train."

Bones glanced out through the viewing pane at the garden's edge, at the blur of stars flooding by in warped colors. Bones was quiet then, eyes distant and his very _soul_ elsewhere for a moment. For all the talk he'd had thus far about the fabled ex-wife, Scotty would have never expected such an emptiness behind the doctor's eyes.

"If it ain't workin'… just gotta move on. Chances are, you're just trying to fix what ain't broke."

That metaphor made sense.

14.

Days later saw the occurrence of one of Jim's more "hare-brained" (as Bones put it) away missions. A small outpost station had been held ransom by K'normian arms dealers. Thankfully, Jaylah had stayed behind this time, at Bones's orders. He had wanted her off that leg until the muscle healed properly and above all, the mildly-hypochondriac doctor vocally dreaded the potential of some space-infection eating at her healing wound.

A firefight ensued, that led to hull damage on the ship and possibly the premature end of one unfortunate shuttlecraft. The poor thing had come back all of held together by its last threads.

One of several power cores had been hit on the port side bow of the Enterprise, which resulted in intermittent gravity plating malfunctions. Of all the things that would break, it was the one thing the ship was always designed to see broken absolutely _last._ On the bright side, despite concerning errors in the port side gravity plates, the inertial dampeners were untouched. It was pleasant knowing they wouldn't be smashed into particles the next time they jumped to warp speed, he reminded himself through a rather messy shuttlecraft cleanup.

Despite how poorly their equipment had fared, the entirety of the away team had returned blessedly unscathed.

There was some "sensitive data" in the shuttlecraft's recording banks that Jim wanted salvaged. Getting the shuttlecraft's system back online was the first step. Jaylah had been quick to help tackle that problem.

Keeping the damned thing from overheating and shutting down mid-transfer, however, was the next task. There would only be so many attempts viable before the data drives were corrupted from the continuous rebooting.

"Commander, we're getting another transfer error on our end."

"Aye, I'm gonna stop the data transfer an' reset the system."

Chekov's voice answered over the comms, "Data tranz'fer iz at 86%, if the rate of intermittent zystem crashes iz conzistent, ve zhould be fine to proceed."

"I think we should pause it here," Jaylah said from under a cave of wire and circuit casings in the cabin's bulkhead, "…better not to risk corrupting the files so far into transfer."

"She's right, I'm gettin' errors on this end, Chekov, the system's too banged up to keep from overheatin'."

"Can confirm. It is quite hot in here." Jaylah said, trying her best to keep the cooling system from failing again. She was on her back, having climbed into the gutted operating panel.

After such a long time down there with little progress, he considered trading places with her. If only to look at something other than those damned system error notices.

It was either that or fight off the want to watch her legs under a short red skirt. Her wound was bandaged with wraps that accelerated the healing process exponentially, but she had to replace them often—thus, for the first time, she was wearing the uniform without her trademark black leggings.

Only a wee bit distracting.

 _Try not to be a jackass, try not to stare._

Doing his best not to stare, Scotty wound up staring. Unconsciously (entirely consciously) inching back a bit when Jaylah climbed further into the gutted operating panel, he caught a flash of black panties.

 _I am a jackass_.

Clearing his throat, Scotty said after the last shutdown warning, "We keep tryin' ta salvage this thing, we're gonna end up losin' it entirely."

"92%. Keep the system running just t'ree minutez longer." Chekov said.

System overheating warnings were beginning to pop up with greater frequency, just like the last six times the damned thing crashed. Scotty glanced up from Jaylah, a tired groan, "…shite…"

Another overheating warning sounded, this time with glitched audio accompanying, _"Warning, a pr—pr—with the cooling syste-em-em-em—as been detected. Please begin standby and soft-reboot seque-que-que-que—"_

"Shite!" Jaylah yelled from below.

A burst and airy whir from a coolant tube below the operations panel sounded. He heard Jaylah's reflexive half-hiss, half-roar. Before he could ask if she was okay another coolant tube blew out of its seating near Jaylah's exposed leg, spilling steam and boiling coolant inches from her thigh. Jaylah's free hand caught the thrashing tube quickly and turned it away from them both.

"Shite!" And down the system went again, just seconds before the data transfer reached 94%.

At least it was further than they'd gotten before.

Silence fell over them.

"Iz everyt'ing okay down z'er, Commander?" Chekov asked.

Scotty answered, "Oh, fine. Just another day in the office, Mister Chekov."

"…I will retrieve new coolant tubing." Jaylah sighed.

"Nae, I'll do it, and ye've been down there a good two hours now, take a break." Scotty said, as the interface screen flickered in and out of life, "Give us about fifteen minutes, Mister Chekov, we need to replace the cooling system with a temp. Otherwise, I don't think we're gonna get this thing up an' runnin' long enough to salvage anythin'."

"Understood, Commander." Chekov said.

The comm fell silent. Jaylah was still handling damage control in the control panel. She didn't seem to be budging from her place.

"…we need new coolant."

"On it," Scotty said, standing and making his way around Jaylah for the shuttlecraft's exit.

Before he could cross past Jaylah, however, his foot was caught between her two booted ankles. He looked down, catching himself before she tripped him. Had it been literally anyone else, he'd have been annoyed with this prank at such a time. It surprised him how welcome her tight hold on his leg was. Physical contact was nice.

Scotty quirked a brow, amused, just slightly, "What are ye doin', Lassie?"

"You know what you did, Montgomery Scotty."

 _Know what you did…_ Scotty felt his cheeks grow hot as he turned away and tried to tug his leg free to no avail. He half-panted, half laughed, "Wha-what? I didn't… do anythin'?"

"Is that correct?"

"That… that's the God's honest truth, I… wha-what, uh, what did ye think I…?"

Jaylah was laughing—something low and almost like a purr. He wanted to melt. He feigned a small smile as he looked back at her with a quirked brow.

"You are amusing, sometimes."

"Sometimes?" Scotty grinned with mock-indignance, "Only sometimes?"

She swiped her legs sideward unexpectedly, and he was face-down on the shuttlecraft's floor in half a second at best. He groaned and cursed and confessed, "Alright, alright! I'm sorry, I'm sorry I looked!"

"At least buy me a drink first."

 _A drink?_

Scotty almost looked back at her in question before thinking better of it, from his position—it was only inviting another blow of punishment from an ill-timed glimpse.

"Of 'cerse. Noted." Scotty grunted, climbing back to his feet and rubbing at his chin unceremoniously, "…yannoe, I miss it, a bit. Drinkin' with ye."

Jaylah had climbed out from under the panel and was dusting herself off. She looked up at him with a soft expression—not a smile, but not the typical, stoic fare she gave most others. He didn't catch this face that often, but when he did, he always made note of it in his mind. That calm before a cheeky smirk.

"Ye've… been goin' on all these away missions. Kinna miss ya around 'ere."

Her eyes narrowed, her corners of her mouth hinted at a rise. She tilted her head ever so slightly, and he knew by now, this was her form of a quirked eyebrow, given her lack of said eyebrows.

"Alright, I admit it, I've been missin' me favorite cadet up 'ere."

"After this, we drink again." Jaylah said.

Well, he couldn't say no. That sounded like an order.

He tried to look like he was thinking about it, mulling the offer over in his head, even though the answer was a resolute yes before she'd even finished her sentence. Trying his best to not look as excited as he was, trying his damndest not to show how much his spirits had lifted (and perhaps failing miserably,) Scotty answered, "Works perfect f'er me. If it works perfect f'er you."

"Get the coolant." Jaylah said, before climbing back into the panel.

Scotty had made it a few steps out of the shuttlecraft and well out of Jaylah's presence when he fist-pumped the air and voicelessly cried out, _"Yes! Yes, yes, yes!"_

Drinks with Jaylah again. It was everything he needed and then some.

Except it didn't pan out that way.

Before he had even made it back to the shuttlecraft, his arms full of new coolant system tubing and supplies, Jim was crossing past him with a quick pace and clear purpose.

"Captain." Scotty acknowledged.

Jim nodded back, "I need to borrow one of your engineers."

Of course he did.

"Permission to speak freely, Captain?"

"Go on."

"She's got a job to do here, too. It's what we had her assigned to do?" Scotty tried to make this reminder as casual as he could.

"Noted, Scotty." Jim said.

Jaylah's evening was reassigned to another away mission, responding to a distress call on a stalled out ship. They needed someone who knew their way around disabled impulse drive systems.

 _Don't say a damned thing._

15.

In the ten-forward's bar, over the whiskey and small-talk Jim all of dragged him up for, Scotty half-joked, "Yer stealin' me best cadet."

Jim shrugged, "She's carving her own path. I just open whatever doors I can for her."

"What a gentleman."

"Trying my damndest to stay one," Jim laughed.

Dear friend or not, Scotty wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or punch the guy sometimes. A fake laugh sufficed, before he downed the remainder of his drink and said, "Right, that's that, then."

"You're throwing in the towel a few shots early tonight."

Denying that and doing his best to hide how much he did _not_ want to have more drinks with Jim, listening to him gush over how "hot" Jaylah was—and there wasn't a damned thing Jim could say that Scotty wasn't already painfully aware of—Scotty shrugged, "Cupcake's horoscope advised me against it. Kinna takin' it seriously this time."

"Suit yourself."

Scotty paused, one hand still around the glass. Maybe it was the sudden absence of Jaylah in the Engineering decks, under the shuttlecrafts, next to him digging through paneling and wiring, maybe it was the sudden lack of her that reminded him _of her_ when he looked at the empty glass.

"Jim… promise me you'll keep 'er safe."

Jim only gave the most oblivious and arrogant grin that was his trademark shine—the sort of smile he used to be able to laugh off so easily as Jim being 'just Jim' regarding reckless behaviors.

"Of course. She means the world to me, you know."

"Don' tell _me_ that, tell _her_ that."

"I do. Every chance I get. I don't think she cares that I care."

Was that so?

Quirking one brow, Scotty couldn't help but ask, "…'n why's that?"

"She's not down there to show off or be vainglorious. She's down there to do a job. She knows when a guy's just being a shameless flirt. Just tumbles right off her. Doesn't have time for it. I know that type."

"Yannoe that type?"

"I know that type. Gotta respect her for it. Breaking hearts and taking names. If I were a little younger and a tiny bit more of an asshole, I'd call that a challenge. Guess I'm just not that guy anymore."

"Huh. Well that was, uh, sort of a confessional there."

"Yeah," Jim said, thanking the bartender for the next beer and luring Scotty back with another round, on him, "…stay and join me, Scott. One more round. I've got a broken heart and Bones is fed up with listening to me cry about this girl."

"Is that right?" Scotty asked, keenly interested now. Was he supposed to feel this amused? There was a word for that—schadenfreude, was it? He was all too familiar with Jim's occasional bouts of melodrama when a girl he particularly fancied blew him off, but this… _this_ was some kind of crossed wirings in the machine of fate itself.

"I think I'm in love with her."

"Ya don't say?" Scotty said, leaning forward and resting his chin in one hand.

"I mean," Jim looked around, as though to be sure word wouldn't get back to Jaylah through anyone within earshot, and said, hushed, "…you ever see her move? When she fights? When she runs? When she's just… walking through the halls, chest forward, head high… kinda looks like she could tie you up and break you six ways from Sunday?"

Well, he hadn't _not_ thought about that.

Scotty made his best attempt to look like he _didn't_ understand exactly what Jim meant as he nodded, "Uh… well. I… yeah. Of'cerse. A girl like that. Walks with a lot of, uh…"—he took a swig of his drink, trying to find the word—"…purpose. Lot of purpose, ah… knows where she's goin'…"

"Purpose. Yeah. Exactly, that. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time I said it was love at first sight, man, but…" Jim confessed with a daydreamy sort of smile, "…I do believe it was love at first sight, my friend. Admiration. Challenge. Started watching her training when she was in the Academy. Sparred with her as much as I could. For a minute there, I thought of her more like, more like a rival. God… never thought I'd ever meet a girl I could say was like… like my other half. Fighting with her, moving with her, fighting beside her… where's she been all these years?"

 _On Altamid, you ass._

"And I've been trying, trying to tell her how I feel. But you know. We can't just jump into bed with crewmen and cadets like that," Jim said, as Scotty mentally noted this was definitely a sign of how _drunk_ the good Captain was when he stated that sort of fact, "…you know, man, we've got rules. Standards. Rules."

"Aye. Rules. A job to do."

"A job to do. Right." Jim said, "…but… God, what I'd give to run into her while on shore leave. What I'd give. Just to be in the right place at the right time, just have her fall into my lap. Tell her, ' _Jaylah, I've been in love with you since, since the moment I first saw you, and you're everything to me, and just, run away with me, Jaylah. Let me be your main man, Jaylah.'_ And just… I don't know. Well, I do know. We all know after that. But… _you know_?"

Scotty was trying not to laugh—maybe he was just cracking at this point. He took another, much longer swig of his beer. Jim went on.

"She hasn't spoken to me in a couple of days. Think she's mad at me."

"Why's that?"

"Well. I don't think she knows what a kiss is."

 _Throw me out the airlock._

Jim was absently rubbing at the back of his head as he went on, "…it was just one of those moments, we were alone. It was cold. We were both on night watch around camp. Snow everywhere. She was huddled up to me, I was huddled up to her, and we were talking, and you know, the moment just seemed _right_."

"Talking about what?"

Shrugging, Jim laughed, "Hell if I know. Just talking, man, you know. She was rambling about the shuttlecraft's damages, I think. I kinda zoned out. Can't help it, she was beautiful. I went in for a kiss, _like an idiot_ —"

"Absolutely like an idiot." Scotty agreed.

"—and she just sidestepped it like I didn't even exist. At least, I… maybe she didn't notice. That's it, she just didn't notice. She doesn't know. That makes sense, right?" Jim looked at him.

Scotty nodded.

Jim began rambling about the emotional reaction he'd bottled up since then, just letting all of his bruised ego pour out. Scotty glanced at his watch and considered how much bourbon he still had stashed away in his quarters. He hadn't plowed through it _all_ yet, had he?

"I guess I'm just kicking myself over nothing. Think I should give love another chance."

Squinting, Scotty asked, "…di'nt ye just say that was, categorically, a _bad_ idea, given our jobs, the rules, all that…"

"Love is love, Scotty." Jim said, looking at him with a deadpan expression.

Scotty wasn't sure if this was the alcohol or sarcasm or something else entirely talking.

"You can't fight love." Jim said, more serious than ever.

"…right." Scotty answered slowly, warily.

"I'm going to tell her."

He wasn't sure what kind of _drop_ he felt inside, when Jim said it, but Scotty certainly felt something akin to being dropped down a rickety carnival ride.

"Tell 'er what, now?"

"Tell her I'm in love with her. No action, no fumbling, no romantic kissing in the dark, just straight words. Doesn't have to be anything more. Just a feeling between two people. Don't care where it goes from there. I just want her to know."

"Sir—Sir, ye… ye'know, I, I just cannae recommend that, just, as your Chief of Engineerin', as yer friend," Scotty said, hurrying after Jim, who rose from his chair and made a path for the door. Scotty followed along, but not without taking a step back to grab Jim's discarded jacket for him. Hurrying after, he called out Jim's name and rambled, "…as one of yer crewmates, as, as a guy who's had, more than a few _really awful_ runs with women, I just, just cannae recommend that."

"Thanks," Jim said, accepting the jacket as Scotty handed it to him, "…you're a good friend, Scotty."

"I'm _really not_ , though, Jim."

"Don't be so damned humble. Half of what you heard, I wouldn't dare tell Bones."

"What about Mister Spock?"

"Well, I'd tell him, but he'd probably cite at least twelve conduct violations before I finished my first beer."

"Well, Sir, in his defense," Scotty nearly bumped into a medic coming around the corner who'd stopped to salute the passing Captain, "…in his defense, he's _not wrong_."

"Name me one good reason I shouldn't at least express my utmost admiration for her."

"Uh…" Scotty genuinely thought about this, realizing fast that they were headed toward the gym where Jaylah was likely exercising or sparring—and they weren't far off and getting closer by the second, "…ahh… well, your workin' rapport, on away missions, ta'gether, it might, might strain that relationship."

"She compartmentalizes well enough, I doubt she'll even react to a thing I tell her that's not an order."

"Maybe that, _that_ right there is why she doesn't react to a thing you tell 'er that isn't an order."

"What are you implying, Scotty?"

"I'm not implyin', I'm sayin' that maybe ye just don't really know 'er the way ye think ye know 'er."

They were stopped at the doors in front of the gym, now. He was sweating. His fisted hands (when had he balled his hands into fists?) were trembling (when had he started trembling?) Scotty wasn't sure if he was angry at what was about to happen as much as he was at the way Jim consistently seemed to not know Jaylah at all. Scotty wondered just how, just _when_ , he thought he even knew her any better. On what grounds was he any different than Jim at that very moment, he wondered.

Jim took a breath. Was he psyching himself up?

"Don't do it, Jim," Scotty said.

"Thank you, Scotty," Jim said, hands on Scotty's shoulders with a tight, loving sort of squeeze, "…thank you for coming with me. For being the moral support I needed."

"Don't do it, Jim," Scotty repeated.

Jim's breath still smelled like beer and whiskey, "Alright. Scotty. You're actually really _bad_ at this moral support thing. I was going for reverse-psychology."

"Reverse-psychology, right," Scotty made a hollow laugh, "…well in that case, do it, go in there 'n tell the girl how ye feel, tell her ye love her and have been too much of a damn git thus far ta say anythin'! Tell 'er she drives ya crazy, tell 'er ya can't stop dreamin' about 'er, tell 'er she's everything in the world ye wish ye could be, and then some. Then stand there while she says nothin'. Walk away from it like ye said nothin'. Feel _miserable_ after it all because, suddenly, after that, she doesn't want anythin' ta do with ya. After that, everythin' ye _did_ have with 'er, is suddenly _nothin'_."

Jim squinted and said, "…you really have had some bad luck with love."

"…a divorce and a half." Scotty confessed.

Jim gave Scotty a firm pat on the shoulder and then entered the gym.

 _Oh, heck. Here we go._

Scotty stood by the door, letting his head hang low. He leaned against the wall, feeling, all at once quite _light_ and _heavy_ at the same time.

"Montgomery Scotty?"

That voice. That _voice_.

He bolted around. There she was, dressed down in her sporting clothes, with a duffel bag of her gear slung over one shoulder. Jaylah tilted her head to the side, confusion on her face. Her hair was still dripping wet from the showers in the adjacent corridor.

"Yes, hello!" Scotty straightened up, trying his best to look alive. An odd silence. One fist lunged out and slammed the gym door's locking mechanism.

"Are the doors jammed again?"

"Aye," Scotty said, nodding with a deep sigh, "…the doors on these ships. Who, _who assembles them?"_

Jaylah shrugged, smiling, "Who knows?"

"Who knows!" Scotty repeated, drumming his fingertips on the door.

He heard the door's opening mechanism whir to life but stop mid-process as the locking system kicked in. He glanced over as the red, "lock" light flickered green. Scotty slammed his hand down on it again, back to a very locked red.

"Is it working?" Jaylah asked.

"Oh, ye'know… it's …intermittent," Scotty cleared his throat, wondering if this counted as an act of mutiny—he was definitely weighing his options, "…so… ah… ye like to go fer a jog? Around the ship?"

Jaylah looked to be thinking about this for a beat before she reached out one hand to Scotty, "Yes. I would like to run with you, Montgomery Scotty."

"Oh, thank God!" Scotty half-laughed, half-sighed, sweating and red. The locking mechanism turned green again. He slammed his fist down once more, again, it was red.

Jaylah eyed this motion with curiosity.

Luckily, the doors and walls of the ship were all soundproof. But that didn't stop the softest sound of pounding on the other side. Scotty's eyes shifted sideward nervously for a moment before he took Jaylah's hand. Another zap of static electricity—"Ow, sorry!"—"Sorry!"—and then they were running.

"Luck!" Jaylah grinned.

"So… so much luck!" Scotty said, leading the way, hoping to get as lost as humanly possible.

All the bloody luck in the universe and he couldn't hold all of the words in for much longer.


	3. 16 - 21

**Author's Note, October 8th, 2016: The Big Chapter 15-35 Update**  
Wow, I'm so awful at keeping my updates on this site consistent with the ones on _ArchiveOfOurOwn_. But to anyone subscribed to this fic here, just a heads up, you'll find a more frequently updated version at

 _ **archiveofourown(. org) /works/7616383/chapters/17336947**_

(Do remove the spaces between the site name, dot, and slash, I don't know why this site likes to delete URLs, but this should get the link across.)

This mirror's been stuck to chapter 15 for the last three months while the _Archive_ version has just hit 35. I just keep forgetting Fanfictionnetis still a thing, thanks to Tumblr.

I tend to reply to reviews and comments more on that site, so apologies if I don't get to your messages here as quickly—I've only just seen them and I appreciate every one, thank you so much for reading thus far you guys and I hope the story continues to bring the feels.

I'm going to be posting chapters 15 through 35 today, so expect a massive jump in word count out of the blue, and you know, as always, enjoy and have fun.

* * *

16.

They ran down more corridors than he thought to count. Jaylah was laughing. His sides were screaming—but he was laughing, too. Cupcake passed them and started to warn—"Xena! No runni—Commander!"—but found himself at odds with the fact that the Chief of Engineering was the one leading the way. A very delayed stand at attention, before Scotty and Jaylah were lost around another corridor.

Maybe Jim had caught sight of them somehow. He couldn't be sure. But the giggling and running came to an abrupt stop when they saw Jim crossing an adjacent hall (he had not yet spotted them) looking rather disheveled and confused.

Jaylah made to stand and salute, before Scotty—"Shh! Shh! No, no, no, no, no!"—pulled her into his arms and the dove into a nearby lift. They stumbled in, breathing heavy and leaning back against the wall. Scotty let Jaylah go and apologized profusely for pulling her in so suddenly. Jaylah didn't bolt away from him, though. Instead, she lingered against his chest and laughed.

"What is this game? I do not know this game you are playing with the Captain."

"Ahh… well," Scotty wasn't sure there was really _any_ way to spin it sensibly and so he laughed and hoped she couldn't notice the slight squeak in his wheezy breaths, "…I… ah… that… just, just _really_ needed a good workout, I… whew! Captain… the Captain would've… been… wee bit upset… if he'd seen us runnin'."

"I see," Jaylah nodded. She was giggling against his chest.

Scotty's gaze was on the icy white lights of the ceiling. His arms were lingering back over her shoulders, over her ponytail and her head—each hair like gossamer silk—and her breaths were hot against his body even through his shirt. Euphoria was nice.

This moment could have been frozen in time and he wouldn't have complained a bit. But it wouldn't last, he reminded himself. His arms around her had at some point, become a full embrace. Her arms were moving around him, similarly. This couldn't possibly be real.

Scotty knew he had to say it now or let her go back into those halls to run into Jim. Jim would flash those perfect playboy smirk and flash those sparkling baby blues… maybe tousle his perfect hair and tell her in all his handsome, flawless charm, _"I'm in love with you, Jaylah."_

"Jaylah…" Scotty swallowed hard.

"…your heart is beating so fast from all that running," Jaylah said, "…you really do need to run more."

A laugh escaped him—well, that was certainly the truest truth he'd heard all week.

Shaking his head, he confessed, "It, it's not… not just the running… I… whew, heck, I'm winded…"

"Do you need a minute?"

"I need a minute," Scotty said as she moved, leaning against the wall next to him.

Truth be told, he was just stalling now.

Jaylah took his hand in hers again, and before he realized what she was doing, his hand was on her breast.

"My heart is pounding, too." Jaylah said, "…it is nice. It makes you stronger, you know."

Scotty did his absolute best _not_ to talk, _not_ to say a damned thing because he was certain that right there, if he said anything, it would come out in some kind of static-fried half-gibberish, half-Gaelic babble. Everything around him had been so perfectly halted in time that he didn't even realize the lift had come to a stop and the doors were whirring open to receive new passengers.

Of course, it would be Sulu and Chekov on the other side, in the throes of some intense debate about how karaoke did _not_ , in fact, come from Russia. Chekov swore it up and down, though. At least, all of up until he looked in, got an eyeful of a very red, very petrified Scotty with one hand on the breast of one disheveled, dressed-down Jaylah.

In his head, perhaps, he might have cursed a wee bit and slammed the first button on the panel he could to get the doors shut and the lift moving again. Except, no. No, Scotty simply stood there like a deer in headlights. Looking every bit as shocked as Chekov, who was suddenly pointing and exclaiming, _"Bozhe moy!"_

Sulu, on the other hand, was as calm as Jaylah, just taking in the sight with an expression of being mildly impressed. Sulu reached for the panel and pressed a button. Mercifully, the door began to close.

"Thank you." Scotty all of whimpered.

Sulu nodded, solemn. The doors shut, as Chekov was exclaiming, "I knew zis! I knew zis!"

 _The **heck** was that supposed to mean!?_

And then they were alone again. Alone, with the lift moving down for residential level.

Chekov was going to run his mouth and tell everyone. At least, unless Sulu convinced him not to speak a word of it. Scotty had some faith in Sulu for it. Then there was the other pressing matter—his hand still on Jaylah's bosom. He only then realized how fast her heart really was pounding.

She glanced back at him, meeting his eyes. Her lips parted slightly to speak, but no words came. She was still holding his hand over her chest and he didn't want to move. Instead, somehow, he'd wound up closer than he'd ever been to her. Jaylah's cheeks had the faintest trace of a blue tint to them. He'd seen it before, when she was drunk, but it never ceased to amaze him—she blushed blue.

"It's still going really fast." She said.

"Mine too." Closer still—close enough that he could have stolen a kiss right there, though he wouldn't dare. Instead, there was just the warmth of her body against his own and the tickle of soft, quick breaths. Long, damp hair carried the sweet hint of lavender, and her skin, her _lips_ just inches from his own now, held a scent of citrus so sweet and vivid that he could almost taste it.

There wasn't a lot of time left to just say it—he could almost hear his own mental Bones yelling at him in his head, _"Dammit man, this isn't grade school, spit it out!"_

They'd have to get out of this lift some time. Or ride it back up and risk running into Jim again.

Scotty swallowed hard and looked away for a moment, mouthing the words under his breath, _"I think I…"_ he stopped himself and then shut his eyes. Finally, he said, "Jaylah, I…"

She watched him, waiting for his words, but he could only give a defeated sigh and think that he wanted to run away before he ruined everything they had thus far. It came as a stifled laugh—sometimes he couldn't believe himself. Jaylah tilted her head to the side again, that look of curiosity he adored so much on her.

"Yes?" Jaylah was biting her lower lip—oh, _God_ , she was biting her lower lip and smiling up at him.

"I…" Scotty's voice came just above a whisper, before venturing, "…we never did get those drinks together, yannoe."

"We never did," Jaylah confirmed.

"I, maybe, I mean, if… if ye'd like, still, we could, I have—"

"Yes." Jaylah said.

They both knew at this hour the ten-forward's bar was closed for the "night" and they both knew Scotty's "favorite" past-time was drinking himself to sleep every other night. Alone. It wasn't as though that hadn't come up in conversation before. Heck, he was inviting her to have a drink with him. Alone. In his quarters. Alone. With drinks.

"…I… I mean… bein' that the ten-forward's out for the night, I mean… my quarters, drinks…"

"Yes." Jaylah repeated, with a nod. She looped her arms around his shoulders, eyes fixed on his. The unique shape of her irises and pupils never ceased to hypnotize him. In a breath, Jaylah leaned up on the tips of her toes to plant a small kiss on his lips. A tiny taste of some electric heaven, lips as soft as silk, gentle, experimental. One peck out of curiosity, and then another, longer and more confident.

When he'd stopped standing there like a short-circuiting idiot, Scotty leaned into her embrace and kissed back. Cautious, slow, keeping as modest and tame as Jaylah lead him. Lips brushing against lips, innocent and yet powerful enough to steal his breath away. A kiss against the soft swell beneath her cupid's bow. A kiss at the corner of her grinning mouth became a clumsy kiss against her pearly fangs as she giggled. A kiss that carried her weight against him with increasing aggression and challenge. Jaylah's arms tightened behind his neck and his arms slipped around her slender frame.

The lift stopped and when she inched away, the breath she took could have taken the very life from him. He didn't realize he was still standing there with his eyes closed like a virgin who'd just had his mind blown until Jaylah slipped free of his hold and was leading him out the lift's doors.

She turned a corner, the halls were dead silent, most of the officers in their dwellings fast asleep. Anyone up for the twilight shifts was already at their station elsewhere in the ship. A figure down the hall caught his eye—the lovely Uhura, walking hand in hand with Spock (luckily, both walking _away,_ without a chance of glimpsing he and Jaylah.) Jaylah knew the drill—she backed around the corner they'd nearly crossed, taking cover at his side.

She was laughing quietly again, and he had to admit this sneaking around was mildly entertaining—more nerve-wracking, but _fun_ all the same. When the First Officer and his darling were gone, their conversation followed until silence fell upon the corridors (had they always spoken Vulcan in their private time like that? He'd never noticed.)

He lead them the rest of the way until they all of dove into his quarters with the door whirring shut behind them.

Jaylah looked up at him, beaming, "…I like this. It's exciting."

Scotty scoffed and said, "I might have died at least several times back there, ta tell ye the truth. All of this yer lookin' at. Ghost. Pure ghost. Seven times over. Dead."

She was taking in her surroundings with interest, her expression still hypnotic and pleasant.

"Officers' quarters… are roomy."

"Just more room to leave projects lyin' aroun'," Scotty confessed.

There wasn't much to see, really—he wasn't one to keep a lot of things. Perhaps a few pieces of broken machinery he'd been tinkering with here and there, but for the most part, he didn't hold on to a lot these days. Jaylah was wandering around with quiet amusement—seeing her there felt almost dreamlike.

Catching himself staring again, he focused on procuring them both drinks. A cabinet in the kitchenette area of his cabin had a small library of different drinks (half of which he wasn't _supposed_ to have, admittedly.) He and Keenser had a tradition of trading a bottle of something new with one another every so often—sometimes Keenser's trades were hit or miss, but heck, sometimes he brought in some real gems.

"Alright, pick yer poison, Lassie. I've got—" Scotty took a breath, and then sounded off, "…vodka, poteen, scotch, Michelob, warnog— _don't tell anyone 'bout that_ —, toffa, gin, Glenfiddich, Heisler, scotch, Skagaran, a _Saint-Émilion_ , Keenser's favorite Dresci— _why the 'ell 'aven't I thrown that out?_ —, more scotch, Kentucky bourbon, tullaberry, Andorian, Aldebaran and… the heck is that?"

He trailed off, squinting at the lonely bottle in the back he'd not noticed since he'd (drunkenly) tossed it back there, and murmured, "… _ohh,_ that's where I… alright, that's… that one's not… that's coolant," he grinned, dopey, as he removed the repurposed brandy bottle from his liquor cabinet and tossed it aside, "…wow, that could've been bad. Ye _might_ 'ave inadvertently just saved me life 'ere."

Jaylah had sauntered up beside him, leaning over the kitchenette's bar with a coquettish smile, "…the Aldebaran."

"A lady after my own heart." Scotty grinned, filling two glasses with the bright green liquor, "…cheers, Lassie."

17.

If anything, Keenser was about the very _last_ thing on Scotty's mind at that moment. Perhaps, in retrospect, maybe he should've at least considered the task he'd left the Roylan with before leaving the Engineering decks hours prior to his small "date" with Jaylah. That task in particular, being the continued repair of the gravity plates that had been under over a week's worth of repairs since that last firefight damaged ship's bow.

Keenser had it under control. He grunted as such between acidic sniffling as Scotty was leaving. Keenser didn't seem to sleep often, instead, preferring to find something to busy his time and hands with. He'd been coming back from another one of those colds, but occasionally— _occasionally_ —a sneeze would all of knock him onto his rear and send him into a string of muttered cursing in his native language.

Surely enough, he was just about finished repairing the gravity plating system's grid. It was located high up, requiring a steady climb and a harness strapped around his hips to work at it as he did for the past three hours. He sniffled up a small trail of acid and continued to reconstruct the messy nest of wires.

Keenser could feel another sneeze coming on—and sneezing acid all over the gravity plating system grid was going to set him back another two hours, minimum.

Across the ship, Scotty and Jaylah were well into their third round of drinks. Their conversation had been a long myriad of recalled memories—Jaylah spoke of the fond times she'd had in the academy and they both had agreed the crusty old Professor Conrad of the robotics department was something of a tool—he'd been surprised to hear the guy was teaching in Yorktown. He'd detailed to Jaylah the long history of "disagreements" they had shared together on the San Francisco campus. She had asked him about San Francisco, and she asked him about Earth. He recounted it in loving detail and she hung on every word with mesmerized eyes.

"The Enterprise will return to Earth after this mission, yes?"

"Oh, of c'erse," Scotty said, "…I'll show ya around. Earth. Kinna nice li'l planet there."

"I would like that. You were born on that planet?"

"Aye, a small part of it. A small island on a small planet."

"What was that place like?"

Scotty stared into space, thinking about it for a moment and said, "…Lots of rain."

"I would like to see rain again." Jaylah smiled and confessed in a soft voice, "It was one of the few things I enjoyed on Altamid. It was peaceful. Very cold, but peaceful."

"Ye ever see an ocean?"

Jaylah shook her head, "…Altamid is the only planet I have ever been on before I went on Away Missions. I was not near any ocean. I have seen pictures of it. I would like to see that, too."

She really _was_ born and raised in space.

They found their way onto a sofa in the lounge area and dug through the music on the device from Jaylah's duffel bag. The music had gone through a mix of (all damn near _ancient_ ) thrash metal, classic rock, electro funk he was categorically _not expecting_ on Jaylah's playlists, down-trip, one jazz song that Jaylah skipped with amusing embarrassment, and her standard rap metal.

Scrolling through her playlist out of curiosity, one name (out of many he was surprised not to recognize, having had quite the loud "classical" phase in his teen years) stood out, " _Ohh…_ ye have _Bulls on Parade…_ and… ohh, that **_was_** _Careless Whisper!"_

"No! No! Delete that one!" Jaylah cried, all of lunging over him as he held the device out of arms reach. She climbed over him clumsily, pawing after it while his thumb hovered over play.

"Why do ye 'ave it if ye hate it?"

"It's just there, it was all the music I have from the Franklin! But delete that one!"

"Why, it's not _bad!"_

"It is horrible!"

"I'm gonna hit play."

"I will spill your drink."

Sobering ( _jokingly_ ) Scotty gasped and said, "Ye _wouldn't_ …"

"I would."

"Alright, Lassie, I'll delete it… how do I delete it again? Just… just press my thumb down on the song title and—" Scotty was grinning, feigning ignorance.

"No! No!" Jaylah climbed over him—an unintentional face full of her chest nearly caused the device to slip free from his hand—and then she nearly _did_ knock his glass out of his other hand with one flailed ankle. Her panic was a bit cute, honestly, and he couldn't understand how she could hate one song so much and still keep it on her music device unless she secretly enjoyed it.

Before he could press play, she managed to smack the thing out of his hand and when the threat of being subjected to it passed, she went a bit limp over him with exaggerated relief. At least, he thought it was exaggerated. It didn't matter all too much, though, she was straddling him and leaning over his body with a very soft and very ample bosom all of smothering him. Admittedly, once the chest in the face happened, any of his effort to keep the device away from her had rightly stopped.

"S… nn… hffle…" Scotty's words came, muffled—she _had_ to be doing this on purpose.

Jaylah perked up a bit, "…what?"

"It's on shuffle—" Scotty pulled her back against his face when she moved just enough for him to speak. She groaned and fell easily against him. His arms looped around her waist, her back, the entirety of his being more drunk on her touch and presence than the Aldebaran whiskey in his forgotten glass.

"…there is a one in four-hundred, twenty-six chance that it will even come on."

Scotty shrugged and said (a bit less muffled this time,) "…still a chance."

Jaylah slid back down across his body—that sensation stirring a ripple of longing through the very core of his body—until she sat pleasantly on his lap with her arms looped around his shoulders. He still couldn't quite believe this wasn't a dream, that the whole night hadn't been some wonderful dream. Tempting as it was, he still couldn't quite bring himself to cup her beautiful face in his hands and kiss her hard through heated breaths.

"Chance…" Jaylah repeated softly.

She narrowed her eyes, gazing rather intensely at him. Scotty wasn't sure what to make of it—she always had a slightly predatory aura about her. Moreso now than ever before, her face just inches away. Gold, catlike eyes were fixed on his own blinking ever so slowly, entirely sober and unbothered by alcohol as easily as his human body was.

"What are the chances I'd 'ave ended up with ya 'ere in my arms?" He didn't realize he was thinking aloud until he'd already said it.

"Not in your favor, Montgomery Scotty, but here we are." There was something, at that moment, about the black lines on her moondust-white face, that made him think of _light_. He couldn't quite connect the dots. Perhaps the thought would become clear to him, later, sober.

Scotty shrugged, "Never did 'ave much luck with anythin'. But… 'ere we are."

"In my language, the word for _luck_ is the same word we use for _love_. It goes hand in hand. Rare for some. Plentiful for others. For me, it seemed to be a chance like a falling star."

"What does it sound like? Yer word for it."

"Sier'Kat-ree. That is a… a homograph." Jaylah said with a soft smile. She looked as though a fond memory were flickering through her mind.

Before he could inquire, she'd pushed it aside again. Maybe he was just being nosy, but he wanted to know. He wanted to know everything that went on in her mind—curiosity about another person had rarely been as strong as curiosity for mathematics or machinery or theory. But there it was.

"And you?" Jaylah asked, "You speak a different language than most of the humans I have met."

"I… er—aye," Scotty confessed, "…humans have a lot of languages."

"What is love in your language?"

He sucked in a breath, but before he answered, that damned hilarious song had just _happened_ to be shuffled into the speakers. Jaylah glanced up, eyes widening—and he was sure that if she could, well, _pale_ , she would have. Jaylah lunged past him, nearly tumbling over the back of the sofa, and he'd been too entranced in his own fear of the word to catch and stop her.

"Alright. I am deleting this!" Jaylah grumbled over obnoxiously sensual saxophone notes.

"Wait! Why do ya hate it so much!?" Scotty climbed after her, laughing.

"I just… I just do!" Jaylah said, thumbing through the small screen's options. Her face was blue with blush.

Scotty grabbed his once-forgotten glass and climbed over to join her. He hadn't realized he was a bit past buzzed and well into drunk when he landed with an unceremonious thump on the floor next to her—skillfully, however, he didn't spill his drink. Jaylah hadn't noticed a second of it, immersed in her device.

The song stopped and silence fell over the room.

"There." Jaylah sighed in quiet triumph.

Well. That was the sad, lonely death of _Careless Whisper_ , then.

Except, when Jaylah looked up in confusion at the silence and then back at the device, he noted that something was off. The lights flickered, once, twice, before primary lighting gave in the fashion typical of a minor power failure, leaving only dimmed emergency lighting along the edges of the floor.

Jaylah glanced around with wide, wondrous eyes. The stars were still beyond the viewing panes, blinking, distant suns so far off that they were like particles of snow frozen against a night sky.

Scotty had climbed up beside Jaylah when the lights went out. He furrowed his brow, "Well, that's not good."

When he brought his glass up to take another drink, he realized it was empty—and it wasn't his doing, either. The green liquor was actually floating into the air beside him. Jaylah's device was floating free of her hand. The butterflies and weightless feeling he usually felt this close to Jaylah became the failure of his cabin's gravity plating beneath the floor, and the two of them were steadily floating upward.

Jaylah reached out for him. He could not tell if she was startled by this or simply trying to keep from drifting away. Her grasp and touch were welcome, though.

"Oh, _heck._ Gravity's out. We're alright," Scotty reassured her, "…Keenser's probably gone and sneezed all over a system grid."

"Should we go fix it?" Jaylah asked.

Truth be told, Scotty rather loved zero-gravity environments. He'd always found it relaxing. He shrugged, "Keenser's got it handled. I think. For now… just enjoy the ride."

They were a good meter off of the floor now. Furniture was bolted down and unmoving, but smaller gadgets and trinkets around the cabin were tumbling through the air around them. Jaylah's emptied glass tumbled by. She caught it, still anchoring herself to Scotty with her other hand. Her movement pulled them both around into a small, slow spin and she was visibly unfazed by it all.

"Not yer first time in zero-grav? Aside from the Academy." Scotty asked.

Jaylah shook her head, "…the _Mal-komma_ lost its gravity every now and then. I used to get so scared as a child, but… I started to look forward to it. If that makes any sense."

Scotty thought about it and suggested, "Aye. I was scared of thunderstorms as a wee _bairn_ ,"—a laugh escaped him at the thought—"…hated 'em. Cried every time. Got older. Got used to 'em. Look forward to 'em now."

"What is a _thunderstorm_ like?" Jaylah asked, head tilted slightly as she floated beside him.

Scotty was taken aback by this question, "Ye've never seen one? Electricity in the clouds, roarin' thunder, rain everywhere?"

Jaylah shook her head, "…it barely rained where I lived on Altamid. I read of them in the Academy. Atmospheric conditions and even atmospheric anomalies on various planets. Everyone was so familiar with thunderstorms. Spoke of them often. I have never seen."

So she'd never seen a thunderstorm… the only thought on his mind at that moment was somehow bringing her to Earth with him, somehow, someday, and showing her the thunderstorms he'd grown up with in Aberdeen.

Jaylah reached for Scotty's empty glass, "Give that to me and hold on to my leg."

"What? What are ye doing?"

"I am hunting."

"…hunting what?" Scotty's only question came after he handed her the glass. He held onto her leg as she hovered upward, and then he realized with great amusement, she was hunting the escaped blob of whiskey that had separated into three smaller masses. A fourth, stray mass of the liquid had already dispersed into scattered droplets over by the kitchenette.

Jaylah reached after, trying to scoop the liquor up with her glass. She missed the first time, but cheered when she got it the second time. He cheered for her.

"Got it!"

"Brilliant, now, now get me the other one?"

"On it! Here, don't let it fly away." Jaylah said, holding her hand over the small glass trap and hand it to Scotty. She turned her attention to the other stray mass of whiskey and gasped, "It's heading for the window!"

"Save it, Lassie!"

"I'm trying!"

Jaylah reached out for it once, her weight and motions pulling them in the direction of the window. Sadly, however, it bounced off of the window and separated at its ends into smaller droplets. Jaylah hung her head, defeated, but quietly giggling.

"At least an attempt was made. 'ere, Lassie." Scotty said, giving her back the glass she'd managed.

She pulled herself back down into his arms and with the trapped whiskey in the glass, she set it free like a caged butterfly—before catching it in her mouth and swallowing with a fanged grin.

"Huntin' down liquor in zero gravity. High up on the list of things I never knew I needed in my life." Scotty said, watching her with amusement.

"I just wanted to chase it." Jaylah shrugged.

 _Chase it_.

If he hadn't thought her utterly _perfect_ already…

"Ye kinna enjoy a chase like that, don't ye?" Scotty said.

The huntress's sigh was soft and almost sleepy as she relaxed against his body. With a nod, her voice came quietly as she answered, "I love to chase."

Jaylah rested her head against his collar and he nearly shuddered at the electric feel of her fingertips tracing invisible lines along his throat. The softest friction of static on flesh, exacerbated by the lightness of a buzz and the loss of gravity around them.

"I'd like ta show ye the thunderstorms on Earth one day, yannoe… if ye'd be so willin', that is."

He heard Jaylah's breath, an amused sort of exhale as she nodded and said, "I would like that. _Verra_ much, Montgomery Scotty."

Her body was lithe and light against him, but her arms kept a tight hold around his shoulders. Her cheek brushed against his neck and Scotty could feel her smiling. When she turned her head up, the tip of her nose brushed against his. Lips ghosted over one another in the echo of a kiss. He wasn't ready to stop taking in the sight of her—hair floating like some kind of ethereal angel. One side of her was illuminated by the stars beyond—and that light caught and was refracted in the gold pools of her eyes.

Finally, he reached up and stroked the gossamer tresses of wild, silver hair aside, all to caress her face, to trace the black lines patterned down across her cheek and jawline. Down it led his fingertips, across a long, slender throat and across the curve of her collarbone.

Jaylah's fingertips were soft along his shoulders, up along the line of his jaw and tracing over his cheekbones. Letting his eyes slip shut, Scotty sighed and leaned into her touch, no longer willing to deny how long he'd dreamt of it, _craved_ it. That was when he felt her lips on his again, gentle movement between warm breaths. Soft flesh pressing harder, bolder than the innocent, dusted kisses from the lift. That purr in the back of her throat was a sweet sound to his ears, and her hands moved back down to pull him closer.

Each taste of her lips left his head, his very _soul_ swimming. Her lips parted just enough to sigh his name in a way that sent sparks through the entirety of his being. From there, she grazed her teeth across his lower lip, followed by a sensual flit of her tongue. An involuntary half-moan, half-sigh welled in the back of his throat. She'd broken whatever shyness was left to his exterior and he pulled her closer, letting his tongue crash hard against her own.

The sharp inhale she took was enough to tame the electric butterflies storming inside of him. The fanged smirk that followed was only a warning to the aggressive way she pushed back against him. Kissing with growing fervor, she was a graceful mix of tongue and fang. He may have likened the sensation of kissing Jaylah to licking whiskey off of a blade. Lap it up happily until the cut came, he thought, let her bite and sting him wherever she damn well pleased, he thought—he knew he would only moan her name and ask for more.

Just as he'd started to wonder what kind of challenge sex without gravity would be, a harsh pull dragged them both off of their cloud and into the floor. Jaylah landed on top of him, thankfully, and may have gotten no more than some bruised knees. Scotty, on the other hand, landed on his back beneath her, knocking his head quite hard on the floor. He cursed under his breath and curled into Jaylah with a groan.

"Are you alright?"

"I'll… I'll be fine… just glad I landed on my back…" Scotty winced, one hand moving back to rub the sore spot, "…are ye alright, Lassie?"

Jaylah nodded, sitting up and straddling his hips. The lights were still out, save for the safety markers where the floor met the walls. Her weight on his lap nearly stirred a gasp from him. Did she even realize her movements, her unintentional _grind_ against his body was—

"Are you sure you are alright? You look like you're in pain." Was she playing coy or just sadistic?

"Nae—I'm… _aah_ , that's—I'm alright…!"

Jaylah had tumbled off of him and was sitting up—and quickly, Scotty was also sitting upright next to her, trying not to be so damned _obvious._ He glanced away, wondering if this was a sign from the universe itself that they should just call it a night. Let her head back to her quarters before he fucked something up and…

…and there he was again, catching himself staring in her direction, eyes taking in each hypnotic curve of her body—shoulders, slender, fair neck, hips and legs, long and curled beneath her. Her fingertips drummed over one knee, absently. Her lips curled in a subtle smile that showed her fangs as her sunlight irises fixed elseward.

Jaylah looked at him, finally, her face still flushed and cerulean at the cheeks. Her lips were plump and kiss-swollen and he was suddenly _incredibly_ aware of how much he craved the taste of her tongue and ghosted scrape of her sharp canines against his lips. Her eyes were half-lidded, dreamy, she was perhaps just as dazed as he was.

"…gettin' a bit late, I suppose…" Scotty sighed, all of tearing a lusty gaze from her—she was so much more than just some visage of a goddess to ogle like some creep. He rubbed at the sore spot on the back of his head and shrugged, "…if ye'd like me to walk ye back to yer quarters or, I mean, ye don't _have_ ta go, not if ye don't _want_ to, I mean, but—"

"I would like to stay with you."

He hadn't even had the time to process that or even glance back her way as he nodded and took in a breath, "—but, aye, yes, ye can stay with me if ye li—"

Jaylah had all of tackled him, then, dropping him back onto the floor, silencing him with a kiss that burned with all the ferocity he could have only dreamt of. Her hands on him were a teasing, slower kind of aggression that traced down across his chest, toward his trousers. At some point between kissing like lust-mad teenagers on the lounge floor, they traced a path the bedroom—but not without Jaylah all of wrestling Scotty into walls with aggressive kisses and love bites along his neck. Somehow, _somehow_ , they had made it back to their feet and took it to the bed, and somehow, she let him drop her gently onto his bed, meeting her there with reverent kisses that were matched by her bites and purrs and predatory growls.

Perhaps in the moment that they were tumbling across the soft black sheets, he realized how truly _dominating_ she was. Jaylah had been the first to reach for the clothes—she pulled his shirt off between kisses, throwing it aside and letting her hands roam across his shoulders and body. Somewhere between her moans and purrs he'd lost his trousers and couldn't ever recall from any point forward how or _when_ it had happened, but it _certainly_ happened and Jaylah was _certainly_ responsible. Somehow, amidst the small _war_ between them, he'd managed to get Jaylah out of her clothes, and heaven above, the sight of her body alone, lit only by stars and darkness, could have sent him over the edge.

The black markings across her face and arms crossed over her collar, her breasts, her belly and legs. Her naked form was every bit as slender as it was chiseled of white marble. It brought to mind the image of amazons from Earth—but smaller, _slight_ , but still so very capable of breaking whatever she damn well pleased— _break me_ —and her strength when she held his wrists and pushed him down into his pillows to plant possessive, _claiming_ kisses only cemented his reverent submission. God be _praised_ , at least they didn't have to find out their parts didn't match at the last minute.

Scotty was all too happy to let Jaylah lead—her naked body rocked against him with slow, but gentle lust, sighing when their bodies met. She rose and fell, biting her lower lip as she rode him.

He tasted her skin and left marks across her supple breasts to match the ones she'd left along his own body. Open-mouthed gasps against her neck were lost in a drunk cocktail of pain and pleasure when he felt her thighs tighten around his hips.

Between the blur of that moment and the moment he woke, hours later, he would later recall only the vivid, sweet sting of her fingernails on his back and the heated gasps of his name her lips. Her arms around him, her teeth playfully biting his lips, her body hot and tight beneath him were like some blissful, feverish dream. No matter how much he fought to try and take her, she always wrestled him onto his back. The more she did it, though, the more she tickled at his quiet want to wrestle her back, to claim her as aggressively as she did him, with all of the bites and bruises in the world.

Jaylah moaned words in her native tongue he wanted to _know_. She gasped what was probably sweet nothings against his sweat dampened jawline that drove him mad. When he asked what she said, she answered only with a fanged smile, _"…fight me…"_

Scotty had never been one for overly rough or aggressive sex—Jaylah was all too happy to change his mind, and change his mind, she did.

 _Vicious girl. You're corrupting me. Don't stop—never stop._

His lips against her neck, his words came as a whisper, _"...tha gaol agam ort."_

18.

The alarm in Scotty's clock went off every "morning" at 0500. In this scenario, it was sounding off from well across the room, having been thoroughly relocated by the cabin's brush with antigravity hours before.

When Scotty's sleepy arm flung over to the nightstand, it only hit the stand's empty surface and the alarm clock still roared. It had been a good minute since his last hangover, but his head was certainly feeling it this time. Bits and pieces of the night before were tumbling in, like pieces forming an image of Jaylah.

That was when he groped around lazily through dark sheets for the warm, celestial body that had spent the night beside him.

Except, there was no body beside him.

There was no Jaylah beside him.

Perhaps it was _that_ fact that woke him the hell up more effectively than the alarm clock (which was still chirping a deafening, monotone tune over by the door.) Scotty glimpsed over in slight panic. She couldn't really be gone, could she?

Oh, of course—she was gone, she was _absolutely_ gone.

He slouched back against the pillows in a naked haze of sleepy confusion. Had the night before just been a dream? Everywhere her teeth and lips had marked him still ached—his legs were sore from running through the Enterprise—he winced when the sting of every line drawn by her perfect nails sparked to life. Oh, _heck_ , the night before definitely happened.

And she ran before he did.

A sinking feeling followed that thought.

Slumping back into the blankets, Scotty pulled a pillow over his face—the one Jaylah had used.

He could still smell the lavender echo of her hair on its fabric.

A shower followed—hot water awoke the wounds she'd left on his shoulders and it wasn't until he'd passed his reflection in a mirror that he saw the faint fang-marks just shy of his collar. Sober, now, he wondered if such aggressive sex was just a part of her species or just Jaylah being Jaylah. He could honestly buy either answer. He'd never slept with a woman like Jaylah before, and all of the conquests Jim bragged about— _"Orion women are **weird** in the sack,"_ —sprang to mind, and admittedly, even the most ferocious human girl he'd slept with was vanilla in comparison.

He tried his best to reconcile with the reality that in spite of the night before, he woke up alone.

Maybe it was a cultural thing. Maybe she just slept less (of course, that was it, she slept less, he was made aware of this ages ago!) Maybe she got restless and went to work early in the Engineering levels. Maybe he snored too loud.

Maybe she just regretted it when she woke up.

Warm water poured over him but did nothing to wash the anxiety away. His eyes were sleepily falling shut as his fingertips traced over the two deep marks she'd left where fang had punctured skin.

She wasn't there next to him, in his bed, or even in that shower, and that _bothered_ him, terribly.

Cleaning up and putting on his uniform, he realized only at the last bloody minute that the marks on his neck couldn't possibly be covered up by his shirts, whether he went with a collared variant of the uniform or not (and oh, did he _try_ , when he panicked and noticed how high her bite marks were.)

Engineering was it's typical, busy self when he arrived. No one dared made comment on the bruises he couldn't cover up, but he was sure they didn't go unnoticed. Even Keenser was staring.

"Stop starin'!" Scotty barked, unconsciously palming at his neck.

Keenser shook his head, going back to work.

A long silence followed. By this point, hours into the shift, with Jaylah entirely absent, Scotty ventured to even speak her name.

"Where's Jaylah?"

Keenser shrugged.

Scotty nodded. Fair enough. Keenser wouldn't, _shouldn't_ know.

Still. It would've been _damned nice_ if he could venture a guess.

Scotty's fingertips drummed on the edge of a porcelain teacup. He monitored the stable pulse of the ship's nuclear heart and kept his eyes fixed on the monitors. Everything that morning was running _too damn smooth_ and Jaylah was _gone_ and Keenser was staring again, and his entire body was sore and in shambles after what Jaylah _did to him_ and she didn't even have the bloody mercy in mind to stay with him and his tea was cold and Keenser was _really_ staring hard, now, at those fang-marks on his neck and—

"Alright, kin ya jus', jus' **_stop_** with the starin'!? The 'eck ye want me to say, Keenser? That I took Shore Leave in Transylvania or what? And what… **_what_** is with how **_quiet_** everythin' is today?!"

Keenser stared at him, his big, oyster face blank and eyes an unreadable black. The Roylan man shrugged and went about his business.

"Commander!" A lower-ranking Engineer saluted as Scotty passed, later that afternoon. Still, no sight of Jaylah. The Engineer had gone completely unnoticed. The ship seemed entirely unfazed by the gravity glitches the night before. They were back in warp, traveling to the next destination without a hitch. The Engineer, saluting, had averted her eyes, trying not to stare.

He waited throughout the duration of the shift. He waited, crossing his arms over his chest as he oversaw the smooth functions of the ship's heart and core. He waited, clinking slightly crooked teeth behind tightly sealed lips. He waited, drumming his fingertips, remembering just how much he **_hated_** when anxiety hit like a bloody train.

Eventually, he found out that Jaylah's absence was a placement and schedule override by the Captain— _heck_ —and eventually, he found out that Jim had come into Engineering at the end of Gamma Shift looking for her. It had been a casual sort of request, but he left when she was nowhere to be found. He'd met up with her in Alpha Shift, citing the necessity of her presence in a meeting.

 _Heck._

Jim probably figured it all out by this point.

It wouldn't be until the end of the Beta Shift that Scotty built up enough courage to seek her out.

Her quarters were in the crewman residential decks, shared with a young Security ensign he'd seen her walking with on rare occasion. The pretty, brunette ensign was nowhere in sight when he reached their cabin, however.

Instead, there was only Jaylah, sitting in the small common area of their shared residence, listening to loud, thrashing music that all of caught him off guard the moment she had the door's computer let him in.

"Whoa… is this _Planet Rock?_ " Scotty muttered, "… _heck, that's old_."

Jaylah kept her back faced to him, saying nothing. Perhaps, over the utterly _deafening_ volume of the archaic electro-funk, she'd just not heard him. Instead, she was more focused on disassembling a rather banged up phaser. It must have belonged to her ensign roommate, Scotty assumed.

He approached, waiting for her to at least say something.

She didn't—instead, she focused on her project.

Alright, then.

Clearing around the sofa she sat upon in the common area, he took a seat beside her, eying her intently. Jaylah did not even look up at her project.

Alright, _what_ was even happening, here?

"Repairs?" He asked, trying his best to speak over the music.

Jaylah nodded.

Scotty nodded in response. Fair enough. Didn't explain a hair why she was absent the majority of the afternoon. Had he been _that awful_ or…?

"…right, _so_ , kinnae get a reason why ya were a no-show all afternoon, Lassie, or…?"

No response.

This was beginning to grate on him.

A remote to the sound system in the cabin sat upon the table Jaylah used to repair the phaser. Scotty grabbed it and muted the music. In the silence, Jaylah barely reacted.

"Just… don't mind me. Casually just waitin' fer somethin'. Anythin'. Maybe?"

Jaylah stopped, finally, setting the phaser down. He held his breath. So this was (likely) it, then—this was how it always ended with girls he got too close to. One tumble in the sack and the next morning they were ice. Apparently, it wasn't just an Earth-women thing, either, he was learning.

"I was assigned to remain in my quarters by the Captain. And so… I am here, now. And I do believe," Jaylah finally turned to him, "…you are not supposed to be here."

It took Scotty a moment to comprehend this, but it fast made sense. She was being confined to her quarters. A punishment for something. There was no way Jim could have known about the night before—not unless he _really_ dug for answers and got weird about it. But that wasn't Jim. It couldn't possibly be.

Why wouldn't he hear a word of this until now, though? If one of his crewmen got confined to their quarters, he was always made aware, long beforehand. There was an ulterior motive behind this. That much was obvious.

"Alright. That… makes a lot of sense." Scotty nodded, accepting this questionable fate.

He swallowed hard, having finally found the answer to one question, only to be left wanting answers to a hundred more. Absently, he rubbed at the side of his neck, just over the bite marks.

"So… if ye don't mind me askin', _just why_ did ye get confined 'ere? Jim spoke with ya. I get that. Was it my fault? Just say the word, and I'll have yer name cleared, I swear it."

Jaylah shook her head, "He wanted to speak with me at the end of Gamma Shift. I was not where I was assigned to be at 0300. My absence was a no-show. So, I am here. He spoke with me about it in Alpha. Asked me where I was."

Scotty drew in a breath.

"I lied," Jaylah confessed, "…I said that I slept in. He gently informed me that this was a punishable offense, neglecting my duties. Standard procedure deems that _this_ is the appropriate punishment. He'd had more words, but was pulled away by a call from the Admiral."

She had fixed her eyes on him now, and there she was again, biting her lower lip in that way that drove him crazy. He wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her again, pull her into the same, aggressive storm of want she'd pulled him into the night before. Scotty had to clear his throat and turn away, before his thoughts ran away with him.

"This is my fault. I'll talk to 'im. I'll tell 'im ye were busy helpin' Keenser fix the gravity plating grid." Scotty trailed off when he noticed her leaning closer, reaching out to the marks she'd left on his neck. The look on her face made him wonder if she'd meant them to be so deep.

"W-what?"

Jaylah laughed and shook her head, "I am sorry about… not being gentle with you. I became… carried away? That is the phrasing?"

A smile crossed his features, reflexively, "Oh, nae, it, I… I, ah… had a great time. Ye can beat me up any day of the week, really, Lassie."

Jaylah was watching him warily, but sure enough, he saw the corners of her mouth rise in a subtle smile. Maybe he was getting better at reading her—he was certain he saw relief in her eyes. He wondered if she had been just as nervous as he'd been. Jaylah nodded and said, "Yes… I would love tha—"

A chime from the door sounded, noting the arrival of a visitor.

Jaylah's attention turned to the entryway— _of course_ , Scotty thought, _it wasn't her cabin-mate._

"Jaylah? If you don't mind, I'd like to continue our conversation."

Jim.

Scotty looked to Jaylah and Jaylah, to Scotty. Both, for a moment, mirrored one another's "deer in headlights" expression. Jaylah dropped the phaser onto the table and took Scotty by the arm—her grip was rough, enjoyably so—and when she all of threw him into her bedroom and closed the door behind him, Scotty stumbled gracelessly into her bed. He'd forgotten how small crewman quarters were.

Tumbling into her sleeping area was like falling into a small library. Books towered on either side of him, some he was familiar with, and some, new material. One clumsily flailed hand had knocked over a tower of technical manuals and study material he recognized as being from the Academy. She'd fit into the rest of the Engineering crew so neatly that he'd about forgotten she was technically still a cadet. As a cadet on the Enterprise getting hands-on training, she was still expected to complete coursework and watch recorded lectures.

Jaylah's voice from beyond the door was welcoming, "Of course, Captain! You took off so suddenly, I thought I had offended you."

 _Offended? What were they even talking about?_

"There is not a damn thing you could say that would genuinely offend me, Jaylah." Jim's voice came, muffled through the door.

"Understood, Sir."

"…alright, well, that wasn't… you know, _literal_ , but… I think the feeling I'm trying to express is…" Jim rambled and then trailed off into, "…gosh, sometimes it's like. Ah… you get right to the edge of expressing something, but it's like fate itself just pulls you away. Like you're about to throw your line into the lake, right when you see the most beautiful striper you've ever seen in your life, and right when you go to drop your line… your damned hook gets caught in a shrub."

Scotty could only imagine the stoic stare Jaylah was probably giving him. He knew from experience that getting too figurative with the girl was like telling a joke to a Vulcan sometimes. If a joke was clear enough, Jaylah would catch on and laugh only with familiarity—only with someone she _knew_.

Her silence against Jim's metaphor only hinted at a distinct lack of familiarity.

"I do not know what a striper is, Sir."

"…right. I'll… I'll have to show you sometime. Striper. Fishing. Earth. You'd like it, you know." Jim said. Scotty felt himself quietly boil— _Over m'dead body, Jim._

Unconsciously, Scotty was rubbing at the marks on his neck again.

"I have heard Earth is nice, Sir."

Jim chuckled, and as he spoke, Scotty could tell the man was slowly pacing about the common area, "…anyway, Jaylah. As I mentioned before, we've got rules to abide by. I don't like confining you to your quarters like this. I really don't. I just hope you don't take it personally. We're here to do a job, you know. You were in the Academy. I'm sure you know all about this. On that note, I hear you're still getting great marks, even as an absentee. Proud of you, kid."

 _Kid?_

"Thank you, Sir."

"…but, ah, what I really wanted to catch a minute with you for was something else. Something else entirely. You're very difficult to pin down, Jaylah. It's hard getting a minute with you alone. One on one like this."

"Is it?"

"It is, yes," Jim chuckled, "…you're always busy, running around Engineering and such, following Mister Scott around. He's lucky to have an assistant like you."

 _She's not an assistant. She's not an assistant. She could damn well be a Chief of Engineering in her own damned right if she wanted, she's not—_

"Thank you, Sir."

"Anyway… after this, I'd like to make you an offer. I feel like you belong somewhere… somewhere you can really shine. You're a leader at heart. I know you have a fondness for machinery, and you're _great_ at it. But you could be so much more than Mister Scott's assistant, you could do more than just… run errands for him in Engineering. I feel like, if you really went for it, you could make it in Command. After all this, after your graduation, I feel like, you belong on the Bridge."

"I appreciate your confidence, Sir—"

"Really, Jaylah, call me Jim."

"…Jim. While I appreciate it, I… am happy where I am. This ship is a house to us all. I want to take care of our house. Build and rebuild when necessary. She is a beautiful and wonderful ship. She deserves hands that love her as much as she loves us."

"…huh… that's an interesting sort of… interpretation."

"Observation, Sir."

"…Observation." Jim agreed.

A silence hung over them. Scotty didn't know when he'd come to lean his ear against the door.

"Jaylah, if you don't mind my asking, completely off the record, just between Jim and Jaylah…"

Another pause.

 _Don't do it, don't do it ye jackass, don't do it._

"…I mean, just… thinking back on some of our away missions together. If… ah… well, how do I put it…?"

"I do not know how do you put it, Sir."

"Jim, really, Jaylah. Anyway. Maybe I'm just imagining things. Your leg is healing up well, yeah?"

"It is."

"Excellent. I'd love to have you with us again. Next mission, you know?"

"Is there a purpose to this meeting, Jim?"

"Purpose. Yeah. Yes. Yes, of course, I… look, Jaylah, I… I just… I wanted to just take advantage of this moment in a way that a Captain really shouldn't. Just off the record. I don't expect a response from you and honestly, it's probably for the better there is none. But I, not as the Captain here, but… just as Jim. I'm fond of you. I care about you. I want to see you do well here. Not let your tasks or performance slip or, you know, see anything on your record that isn't just, just _astounding_ , Jaylah. Astounding, like you. I want nothing but the best in the universe for you, Jaylah. Honestly, I… I think I'm a little in love with you."

Silence followed.

What could even follow something like that?

"Look, whether you feel anything similar or not. Best thing to do is just not dwell on it. You know. Fraternizing rules. I just couldn't let it sit and eat at me any longer… and you're so damn hard to get a minute with. Always fixing the ship or kicking ass in the gym or… blowing through all those textbooks like you've done it all before. I really admire your fortitude. I do."

More silence. Scotty had no idea what he could even imagine was going through Jaylah's mind. At that point, all of the insecurity in the universe was tapping him on the shoulder.

"Thank you, Jim. Is there anything else you would like to speak with me about?"

Scotty felt a smirk teasing the corner of his mouth.

 _Heck, Lassie… you're too good for any of us sorry sods here. Better off without any of us tuggin' at your skirt like dogs._

"…no. That was all. Thanks for hearing me out, Jaylah. After 2300, when Gamma starts, you're free to go about your duties again."

"Of course. Thank you, Captain."

He was leaving now, it sounded like, but he stopped just shy of the door to tell her, "…just… after all this. I mean, being that, I just wanted you to know. I completely, entirely, absolutely understand if you never, ever want to bring it up again. But, you know, in the off-chance that, just maybe, you might think about me sometimes. You know… I'm always here for you. If you need me."

"Thank you," Jaylah said, she spoke clear and gentle, "I appreciate your friendship, Jim. Everything you've done to help me find my way here. You and Montgomery Scotty gave me a direction. I may have been lost after Altamid, had we all gone our separate ways. I am grateful we did not. In this house… you are all my family. I am grateful to be able to say and feel that again."

"Jaylah…"

This whirr of the door opening followed. Jim said nothing else after. Scotty could not see whatever exchange followed, but when the door shut. There was only silence. He wasn't sure if he should venture out, but he was tempted to. He waited, hoping Jaylah would come and get him, but she never came. Finally, when he opened the door into the common room, he was met with Jaylah standing by the door, head hung low and shoulders quaking.

"Jaylah?"

She bolted back around, cheeks wet with streaked tears, face flushed blue. What had set her off like that, why was she so upset? He hadn't seen her in tears since that night on Yorktown. He wanted only to pull her into his arms—and this time, he wasn't going to run away from that feeling. Crossing toward her, she let him pull her against him in an embrace and she wrapped her arms around him with a sensation that could have easily put him back on cloud nine had he not been so damned worried for her.

"What 'appened, are ye alright?"

"I… I'm just…" Jaylah quivered, wiping tears from her cerulean-tinted cheeks, "…I'm just… I haven't spoken those words before, yet. But I've been feeling them for so long. The feeling of a family. _Again._ "

She leaned into him, burying her face into his shoulder. He tightened his hold around her, never wanting to ever let her go.

"Well, of c'erse yer family, 'ere, Lassie. Like I said… yer in a bundle. We're all in this together. Always. Then and now."

She nodded, drying her tears as she leaned away—he could have easily pulled her back into his arms, she felt so _right_ there—and she forced a smile, "…thank you. I honestly… I never thought I would ever feel it again."

Scotty couldn't fight off the want to stroke her face with a gentle touch or brush her hair from her cheeks. She shut her eyes in all their smoky, coal-black, long-lashed beauty, visibly welcoming his touch.

"…after so much time alone, I thought I… might have forgotten what is a family."

He thought he knew. He'd spent plenty of time alone on Delta Vega. But that was different. That was _far_ from what Jaylah went through. He even had Keenser to nag the entire time. But if only a short stint of solitude on an ice planet could've chipped away at him like it did, he knew, that clearly, the time she'd spent on Altamid only made it evident that she was harder than diamond.

"I remember now." Jaylah said, opening her eyes.

He couldn't look into those gold pools for long without his resolve collapsing in utter reverence. She was too much, too damn much, and he couldn't get enough. She fell into a kiss, the same kiss he'd craved since the last one they shared the night before, naked in each other's arms. Every bit of her radiant being could be tasted in the electric taste of her tongue. She had a way of kissing back, inching for _more_ that made him as weak in the knees as his first kiss in high school left him, and he was all too happy to oblige.

"I won't let ye forget, yannoe…" Scotty breathed against her lips, "…I don't think I could… after all of this… I'm a wee bit crazy for ya."

"I think… I understand what that means…" Jaylah sighed between their increasingly feverish kisses.

Hot, electric chills, oddly starting like an epicenter at the mark Jaylah had left on his neck. He could have easily been pulled into another heated romp right there if she'd gone for his clothes—and as if reading his mind, he was suddenly back-against-a-wall, all too happy to let her claim him as though she'd craved him just as he craved her.

"Yannoe, I…" Scotty sighed between her onslaught of kisses— _oh, heck, she's at the belt_ —"I… I was a wee bit hurt by… by ye disappearin' like that this mornin'."

Jaylah hesitated, her fingertips at his trousers. Glancing sideward, she answered, "…I did not want to disturb you."

"Ye… ye know ye wouldn't!"

Jaylah's eyes were still fixed downward but he saw a faint smile at the corners of her mouth. Why did it seem so melancholy? She then nodded as she answered (before going back to plowing him down with kisses,) "…noted."

Another voice entered the room at that moment, "O-oh my god…!"

Scotty and Jaylah simultaneously, slowly, looked over.

At least she'd had the consideration to re-buckle his belt.

If he'd had any question about the whereabouts of Jaylah's pleasant, freckled roommate, those questions were answered. Just as well, he recognized yeoman Laurie from the medical with one arm around the roommate's hip.

The two newcomers dropped everything and stood at attention, with a simultaneous, "Sir!"

 _Oh, heck._

19.

The yeoman and the young ensign were seated on the sofa in the common room, sitting as straight as any human posture could allow, watching Scotty pace before them in an anxious effort to try and explain this. Truth be told, there really _was no explaining this_ , there was no explaining away some odd excuse for walking in on one's roommate snogging on a Lieutenant Commander and unfastening his trousers like that. It was one thing for an ensign and a yeoman to let a rumor go around ship that they were sharing sheets, but… Jaylah was, as far as everyone else was concerned, a _cadet_. This was comparable to being a professor getting caught with a student—not that enough rumors of that nature didn't already tumble around his memory of the San Francisco Academy.

"So. Ye saw nothin'. I'm gonna be straight with the two of ye. Ye saw **_nothin'_**. If even hide nor hair of a rumor spreads. I'll know. I. **_Will. Know._** I will make life **_quite unpleasant._** " Scotty finally faced them, mustering his most authoritative, most cantankerous and demanding tone.

"Yes, Sir!" They answered, almost simultaneously.

That yeoman was hesitating.

That yeoman was mostly running files around in medical.

Medical was a bloody _breeding ground_ for rumors, they were so damned _bored_ up there!

"Right. Ye both are understandin' me 'ere?"

"Absolutely, ye-yes, Sir!" Their mingled voices came.

"…I was never here."

"Never here, Sir!" Yeoman Laurie said.

"Did I ask ye, specifically, yeoman?"

"No, Sir!"

"Good. Now was I ever 'ere?"

"No, Sir!" Both answered.

He felt a tingle on his neck, just shy of his carotid, just where Jaylah had left those two deep imprints.

"Good. That is all, then, crewmen." Scotty said, stepping past them toward the door.

Jaylah stood nearby, her body language anxious despite her stoic expression. The crewmen weren't looking. He reached out, taking her hand in his before he left. She met his eyes with a soft expression of her own. Glancing back at the two crewmen, and then back to Jaylah, he whispered to her, "Drinks again, soon?"

Jaylah nodded with the shadow of a smirk.

When the door to Jaylah's quarters closed behind him, he was anxiously exhaling a deep, held breath. Scotty wasn't the intimidating sort by any means and he'd never been good at feigning that. He was good at barking orders in the Engineering decks, good at telling people what to do when it meant keeping the engines running smoothly, but when it came down to throwing his weight around as a bloody _Lieutenant Commander_ , he was admittedly not fond of being an outright asshole about it. It wasn't as though he were inherently submissive— _heck, yes you are_ —or intentionally mild-mannered and subtly masochistic— _biggest masochist this side of the quadrant, Monty_ —it was simply that he didn't enjoy being a disciplinarian of any sort, rules never had been his "bag" as Jim would've put it.

"Sir!" A crewman stopped in salute as he passed. He nodded in acknowledgement, only pausing when he realized the young Security crewman was giving him a very curious look.

"…what is it?" Scotty growled.

"I… well, with all due respect, you got some blue on you, Sir."

"What?"

The crewman's fingers pointed to their neck, a, "there's something there" gesture that made Scotty palm it again.

"It's blue, Sir. Your skin is turning blue, Sir. I'd visit sick bay if it were me, Sir."

 _Oh, heck. Oh, no. Jaylah's killed me._

Scotty nodded, feigning indifference despite the sinking feeling in his gut and the electric tingle in his neck, "Th-thank you for your observation, crewman."

"No problem, Sir." The crewman said.

"Back to work." Scotty swallowed hard.

"Yes, Sir!" The crewman left.

Scotty cut a veritable _war path_ to sick bay.

"Oh, that's not good." Bones said upon examining Scotty's neck.

Scotty tried his best to keep a straight face—he genuinely did—but he was failing. He kept his volume just above a whisper in their secluded corner of the sickbay, "What's not good? What's wrong, am I dying?"

"Well, honestly, I'm not going to be able to tell you that until I get a sample, hold still. Any idea what bit you?"

"No idea." Scotty lied.

The tricorder was against his neck, followed by a small sting from the disposable peripheral Bones had attached to draw a sample. Scotty cursed under his breath. Bones shrugged, "I'm no psychologist, Scotty, but I've got a feeling you're lyin' to me, here."

As the tricorder analyzed his wound, Bones continued, "I'm gonna be straight with ya, man. You've got a bite mark. That's a bite mark on the Count Drac level, there. I can name only six members of varying species on this ship who could leave a mark like that on someone's person, and I _highly doubt_ it was Keenser."

"Dannoe what yer talkin' about, Doctor. Must've been a spider. Got me in me sleep it did. Space spiders."

"Play coy all you want, two of those six candidates I referenced have fangs with gene-altering venom that could trigger sequential hermaphroditism in their victim for mating purposes."

"Jaylah did it."

Bones scoffed and rolled his eyes. His hand fell to his side as he stepped away for a minute, as though stifling a laugh. Scotty eyed him curiously.

"Well. It's about damn time."

"Am I going to die?"

"No. But I better hit you with some preventative measures before your adrenaline levels and other hormones spike." Bones said, making his way toward a cabinet full of vials and syringes.

"What?"

"Oh, you poor, poor, lovesick lad, you really _didn't_ do your research, did you?" Bones glanced back at him with the sort of beaming grin he'd seen once on a dentist.

"What?"

Bones was grinning the utmost of sadistic grins as he procured a particularly long syringe and equally long vial. Scotty never did like needles.

 _This is it. This is where I die._

"I suggest you learn a bit more about Reedollians before you engage with one, my friend. You're lucky Reedollians are a species given medical clear for human relations with the federation. And to put that in perspective, they were only cleared within the last year because so little is known about their long-term effect on human physiology. Heck, my friend, I'd say you might only be the second or third human to have a relationship with a Reedollian, one of which I'm sure _only_ did it for science, I would bet. Otherwise you'd have to have a hefty talk about the risk of viral contaminations with your CO."

"What? Jim?"

"He wouldn't have enjoyed _that_ conversation. Real stroke of luck, there. This is going to hurt, by the way."

"What?"

"Turn over."

"Nae!"

"Do you want to die!?"

"Nae…! Wait, die? Really?"

"Drop your pants and turn over."

"Why!?"

"Because I need to stick this in your ass cheek, Scotty, now turn over."

"Isn't there some regulation or rule saying ya need ta explain ta me what y'er—"

"Ohhh, _right_ —" Bones glanced upward, before asking, "…are you allergic to bees?"

Scotty shook his head, "Nae?"

"Good. Turn around, drop your pants and count to three."

When the needle stuck—and oh, Bones happily took his damned time—Scotty cursed a million curses under the bloody sun into the crook of his arm as Bones gave him a small briefing on Reedollian sexuality.

"See, my friend, I had a feeling this day would come. Inevitably, a human guy, a Reedollian girl, they meet in a broken spaceship and have common interests, and eventually two idiots fall in love and figure out, _hey, sex isn't all that different between our species!_ Hang on, I need to administer the next one. Don't move."

 _Next… what?!_

"What!?"

"Now, Reedol is a vicious place, virologically, to a human body, my friend, and in accordance with whatever God may have created the human race on Earth, human men were never meant to ever even set foot on Reedol, much less, sleep with Reedollian women. _Now_. See, things are _different_ , this is the future, my friend, _God is Dead_ , as Freud put it—"

"How does that even apply, and that was Nietzsche, not Freu—OH BLOODY HECK!" Scotty cried as another needle marked the other side of his increasingly sore, freckled ass.

"Hold still, just one more supplemental—"

"Why are ye doin' this to me?!"

"Because," Bones said as Scotty was sure his entire left hip was going numb, "…interspecies sexual relations can be a mess. A real ugly mess. Don't worry, Uhura and Spock can tell you all about the vaccinations and precautionary measures. _But_ what I'd say the concern with a Reedollian as opposed to a Vulcan is, would be that Reedollian fangs have venom. It's a sex characteristic to make the whole act less painful and more pleasurable—to them, anyway—you might have experienced more euphoric feelings than typical of a sexual encounter, loss of focus, seemingly random spurts of adrenaline, increased irritability and aggression, also, you'll start getting fancy Reedollian markings from the site of puncture that eventually would spread across your entire body until you look like a happy little zebra cake who is _very obviously_ sleeping with the only other happy little zebra cake on this ship—"

"Oh, heck…" This must have been why Jaylah was so shocked when she saw that human pair kissing in public, back on Yorktown—mouths and biting apparently meant a _whole different story_ to Reedollians.

Scotty was ready to just skip to the end of this awkward discussion and get his damned trousers back on, "…right, right, just, just tell me if I need to be concerned about anythin'?"

"Well, there's a slightly viral aspect to a Reedollian partner's venom. Your genetic code is now permanently altered. Slightly. No need for alarm. You're still human. But now you've just got a little Reedollian genetics in you from your happy, newfound mate."

"What."

"Mazel tov." Bones answered simply.

Jaw hanging slack for a moment, Scotty felt his heart racing before he answered—again, doing his best to remain quiet—with slight panic, "I-I don't even know if she's inta me like that, Bones. We slept together, _once_. _Last night_. Ye don't just sleep with someone once and decide, woop, that's it, wanna spend the rest of me life with ye, _mate!"_

"Reedollians. They aren't a very sexual species. Aggressive as a bull with his balls in a bind, but far from sexual. She's probably into you, Scotty. Otherwise, she probably won't have gone for it. With a human, no less." Bones shrugged, still visibly amused by Scotty's situation, "…I see it like this: fate asked you to take a jump and you took the jump. If you'd known where that jump was gonna take you, would you have still done it?"

Scotty didn't hesitate, "Of course I would've jumped, I'm in love with her! I'm a damned idiot fer it, but I'm in love with 'er and it's bloody terrifyin'."

Casual still, frustratingly so, Bones answered, "…then just roll with it. Keep up to date on your vaccinations to preserve your genetic integrity, otherwise you might… get a few odd lumps on your head or fancy little stripes. I mean, unless family planning is in the cards…"

"What…?"

"Oh, yes, without medical intervention, repeated exposure to Reedollian venom is going to alter your genetic code until you're enough of a match for you two to—"

"Alright, I'm gonna. Gonna just leave, now, thank ye… thank ye for the shots, Doctor. Cannae feel my ass. Really glad for that one. Din't need the damn thing anyway."

Forging his escape, it wasn't until he was nearly gone before Bones asked, "…and you don't even want to know what would happen if you ran out on this whole, mucked up genetic bonding you've got going on?"

Scotty hesitated at that, still busy with digesting the information he'd just gotten. It wasn't as though Starfleet hadn't dropped a three-centimeter thick book on Interspecies Protocol and had them clear it in a semester. It'd partly been _that_ course that made him stick to Earth girls. The way some species handled sex and romance was everywhere from strange to outright terrifying—and that was over a decade ago, long before they had even _heard_ of Reedollians.

It was not as though Starfleet hadn't warned them, though (a warning which folks like Jim Kirk took with a happy, "Challenge accepted.")

Some species were even warned as strictly off-limits—if only for health reasons alone. Varro were one cautionary tale that came to mind.

Still. There was a sense of safety with Jaylah that anchored him from floating away like he did with every other lover since his last brush with heartbreak.

Curiosity pressed Scotty to ask Bones, "Alright… what would happen? Would she eat me bloody head?"

Bones answered, calmly, "Nothing happens. You'll be fine. Heartbroken, maybe, but fine."

"Ye sure? I mean… what with that… strange venom business and vaccinations, there… kinn'a makes me wonder if she'd rip me heart out through me throat if things went south?"

"Well, she might. But that might just a Jaylah thing, not necessarily a Reedollian thing. I can tell you biology, not psychology."

"And… if… _if_ things didn't work out… would _she_ be alright? It's not like… she couldn't find another mate, right? Like, it's not like a love bird? Yannoe, they… they die when their mate's taken away?"

"She would be able to move on just as easily as you."

Scotty nodded, "Good to know. So… not much different from humans, then?"

Bones nodded, "Not much different from humans."

"Right… Yer not gonna tell a soul, right?"

"Confidentiality rules. Of course I can't say a word. Besides. Fraternization rules aren't nearly as strict as they make 'em out to be, Lord knows Kirk's the ex-lover of half the girls on this damned ship. But if I can say one thing, as your friend, Scotty—you guys seem like a good match. A great match. Don't run this time. And keep up the vaccinations. Once a year. Just like Miss Uhura. Spock during Pon-Farr was wild enough. Don't need two of you tail-crazy fools poking about on the same ship. God forbid at the same time."

Scotty mulled over this statement and decided, at some point, he should probably take a refresher on human-Reedollian relations. Heck. He should probably, if not for courtesy's sake, figure out just _who_ the Reedollians were. Just _what_ kind of culture and species the girl he loved—there it was again, that word, "love" and it didn't seem to be going away—was a part of.

That visit with Bones had been far more information that he'd expected to take in at once. Had Uhura and Spock gone through "the talk" in such a wild way? Bones had mentioned they knew all about the whole damn procedures surrounding an interspecies relationship. Heck, Spock himself was walking proof that humans weren't limited to reproduction with only humans. Still—he'd never been the sort to think about having _wee bairns_ of his own. Just never seemed like the sort of things in his cards—not since his first wife happily served him divorce papers and turned up pregnant with twins from another man not even a year later.

Heck, what would little Jaylahs even _look_ like?

The thought lingered on his mind a bit longer than he would have liked—and as terrifying as the concept was, he had to admit, a small Reedollian child would be a bit… cute. Rambunctious as all hell. Bouncing off the bloody walls. Probably liable to break every bone in his body before age ten. Still. Cute, though. But it was a thought for a far, far, _far_ future he wasn't even sure would exist once she got to know _him_.

This was just an awkward, uncomfortable brush with a potential future he was going to quickly ignore and move on from.

It was easier to just run from the thought.

20.

The remainder of Alpha and Beta shifts were uneventful. He ultimately went back to the Engineering decks, which had once again taken up that empty "cold" the way it did when Jaylah wasn't around. Scotty did his best to push the thought of Bones's words to the very back of his mind. The markings were healing, resuming the usual, slightly pink color of his skin and healing in a way they probably wouldn't have without those ass-numbing shots Bones had given him.

He _still_ couldn't quite feel the left side of his ass by the time Beta shift was drawing to a close. Jaylah was on Gamma shift for a short stint—the typical rotation. Everyone had their Alpha, Beta, and Gamma shifts. Even he would be on Gamma in a short few weeks (at least working on Gamma with other Gamma shift crewmen, he'd make sure they got shit done.) Jaylah would inevitably get tumbled off of his roster for a short time until their schedules met once more. Maybe they would have long talks under the shuttlecrafts again—it seemed as though once the away missions with Jim started, he'd all of nearly lost her.

Of course he didn't lose her, though. Somehow.

He was sitting on a catwalk in the engine room, tinkering with a couple dodgy capacitors that had overheated and blown out of their casing. It was there that Jaylah finally met him, and there that he'd been all too happy to linger during the transition between Beta and Gamma shifts, in the hopes of meeting her.

She smiled as she climbed up to the catwalk, greeting him with bright, gold eyes.

"Ye finally made it."

"I finally made it." Jaylah nodded, coming up to sit beside him. The tools in the belt around her waist clinked as she moved. She offered a particularly useful one he'd neglected to bring—just like always, she seemed to know what he needed, what he overlooked.

She reached out to the dismantled cables and burnt out paneling, working beside him as though she were the other pair of hands he could've always used around this engine. They worked together not in silence, but in more words than he'd ever shared with any girl—she knew the ship. She knew how the Enterprise _felt_ , how it reacted when parts broke down and how urgent the need to make repairs was. She knew the difference between the starship's minor scrapes and rugburns against the sort of emergency that'd send a panicked mother to the emergency room with their sick child in tow.

Jaylah knew it all. She knew this ship and she knew him, and she knew his hands as though she knew every movement he'd make before he made them—and he knew, then, that he wasn't scared at all of falling as hard for her as he already had.

He could easily tinker with machines and adopt beautiful baby starships with her for the rest of his life. If only to joke with her while they worked on high catwalks. If only to playfully bump her booted ankle with his own as they swung their legs over the catwalk's edge. If only to reach over her for tools and have her grin at him, knowing he was enjoying where he was all of _far too much_.

"Keep it up, Montgomery Scotty. I might just drop this wrench. All the way down and make you go after it."

Scotty grinned, despite the mild annoyance of not finding the torque wrench he was looking for in the toolbox beside her. Nothing. He turned to the belt around her hips and happily took from her tools.

"Borrowin' this!"

Jaylah grinned, eying him, "It is not free, Montgomery Scotty."

The way Jaylah looked at him could melt him even in the coldest cap of Delta Vega.

"What do I owe ye?"

She nodded, inching nearer, brushing her lips against his. He'd longed for those silken-soft lips against his own all day. The entirety of their shared moment on the catwalk, trying to pass time with small talk, trying not to be all hands and breathy, lustful kisses. But there it was—and just her innocent, grazed lips on his own was enough to let that damned torque wrench slip from his hand.

She caught it—not even looking— _bless_ her soul, she was _perfect_.

"Oh, thank god," Scotty breathed, glancing at the wrench in her one outstretched hand, "…I wasn't goin' after that wrench."

Her lips crossed his again, a taste like cinnamon— _some kind of lip gloss?_ —and a soft rasp to her voice as she answered, "We'd just have to work without it, then."

Knowing her and the roundabout ways she's come up with to fix things—she probably wasn't kidding.

"Cannae get a damned thing done when we're sittin' here distractin' one another like this, Jaylah." Scotty sighed.

"You are right, but… a bit longer… would be nice?" Jaylah's voice came, soft.

"Of c'erse. Yannoe I can't get enough of ye."

Jaylah's dark lashes met as she closed her eyes—black and smoky, beautiful and hiding the gold of her sunset irises. She smiled and he realized then that the way she bit her lower lip as she grinned like this may have looked utterly… _dorky_ on another girl. Heck. It looked _dorky_ on Jaylah. But he'd have had her no other way. In fact, he wanted _more_ of that Jaylah, candid, stifling back girlish giggles, blushing blue at the edges of her cheeks and letting the trace of fangs show when she smiled. At some point, he'd wound up tracing the soft curve of her cheeks—how strange it was that one could crave the certain _feeling_ of another person's soft skin beneath their fingertips, and only a _certain_ person at that.

Maybe it was that Reedollian venom making him crazy for her. Maybe it was just fate. Maybe it was just her. Either way, he wouldn't have had it any other way. Bliss was nice.

"What you said to me last night… say it again?" Jaylah said.

A hot, pink blush started to cross his face as he thought back on it—caught up in the moment, hot and tangled in her limbs, he'd said what he'd been meaning to say for ages. When had he become such a man so afraid of simple words? He couldn't even say it in a language he knew she'd understand…

Taking in a breath, he repeated it again, feeling just as true to it as he did when he first said the words, " _Tha gaol agam ort."_

It felt nice to say it again.

It felt even better to see, to feel her reaction as she'd come closer to him—body warm and slender and soft.

He swallowed, a small touch of nervousness in his voice as he explained, "It… means I have… I have love, love for you. I feel love for you. I'm in love with you."

Jaylah's fingertips had traced across his torso, up over his chest and her index and middle finger walked a playful step across his shoulders as he spoke. She was smiling, she was blushing, her head leaned against his shoulder as she answered, _"N'tier Sier'Kat-ree na."_

Meeting his eyes, she explained, "I share with you, love and luck."

This couldn't be real—this had to be a dream—but she was really there, gazing up at him, smiling, tracing invisible lines across his jawline and smiling at a face that must have been so strange and so pink and freckled and _human_ in comparison to her own, fair and flawless.

"I feel like I'm dreamin'."

"…me too." Jaylah said, her tone akin to a confession.

"Why me? _How?"_

Jaylah laughed and answered, "…in my language, we say, _N'ta nel ta_ —it just is. When I am with you, I… feel happy. I do not think about Altamid. I do not think about… about…"

She hesitated, swallowing hard and beginning to go on before Scotty spoke, "…ye don't have ta think about it. I understand."

"…when we were in Yorktown… that is the edge I thought they spoke of. The edge I could drink away. I couldn't, though. Nothing made the last memories of them go away. I wanted to remember them only in happier times. On the _Mal-komma_. I wanted to remember them smiling, laughing, I wanted to remember them _happy_. But… I will always remember everything. I become afraid, still. Even years after the end of Krall, I may still… wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. Afraid. I left last night because I, because… I become afraid in my dreams. Please understand. I may never stop being afraid."

"I'll understand it. As best I can. I promise ye, Jaylah, ye'll always be safe with me. I don't give a damn if ye have ta cry in the middle of the night, middle of the day, middle of anythin', just tell me, I'll be there, I'll hold you if ye need it. I'll back off if ye need it. Just… just don't make me sit and watch ye fight the rest of yer life alone. I can't let ye fight anythin' alone now, I'm gone, Jaylah, I'm not just Monty anymore, I'm… I'm _Montgomery Scotty_. I'm yours. We fight ta'gether now."

Her eyes welled with tears, but she was stubborn—too stubborn to let them fall in the sight of anyone, not even him. Maybe one day she'd trust him with that vulnerable side, but they had all the time in the world for that. As long as she knew he was _there_ because he _wanted_ to be there, that was all that mattered.

"…thank you… it is luck that I met the you that _you_ are."

It would take time for him to analyze that—perhaps a turn of phrase that didn't translate as well, or perhaps a meaning he didn't yet understand. But he wanted to learn.

"Ye make me believe in it, Jaylah. Luck. Never really did before all this."

 _I couldn't run from this, even if I wanted to._

" _Ye_ make me believe in it, as well, Montgomery Scotty."

21.

It wasn't as though he'd never kept a relationship a secret on the ship before. Of course it wasn't. Although something about this was different.

Jaylah was all hands and touch. Kisses that could variably taste like the sweetest liquor in his quarters as she tackled him to the floor when they stole away a night together, or they could be kisses that tasted like want and subdued need when stolen in the shadows of the engineering deck.

Of course, they had to keep it a secret, at least for the time being. At least until she wasn't merely a cadet, seen by others as being under his supervision. Secrecy was no big deal, he reminded himself, noting how he'd had a few flings with young crewmen who were far too out of his league to ever stay more than a night in his bed—to which, Jaylah returned, with all the hunger and fervor of her first visit.

She always managed to disappear before he awoke, though. The first two times, he imagined, it would probably just settle in his mind like some sort of _thing_ that was distinctly Jaylah. She was busy. She had things to do. Still. It didn't stave off his want to, at some point, wake up with her in his arms just as they'd fallen asleep—and oh, how perfect her body fit against his own when they collapsed into the sheets in a tired, naked mess of tangled limbs and sleepy kisses.

He could trace exhausted lips across the nape of her neck until the second sleep claimed him, as though forming voiceless words against her flesh— _"stay with me"_ —but it would always be a prayer that went unanswered. She would always be gone the next morning, like a fleeting dream.

Of course, secrecy was nothing—it didn't bother.

 _It bothered._

It didn't hurt. She was the radiant prodigy whom everyone knew would not be known as just a cadet much longer. Of course it didn't hurt, each moment he wanted to reach out and trace her knuckles with his fingertips when they sat side by side during the little down time allotted in engineering. Not if others were around—why had it been so much easier to pretend there was _nothing_ with girls that were quickly becoming faceless memories in his mind, why had it been so much easier when it was not _her?_

"She's definitely a record-setter," Jim said, walking beside him in the corridors, amidst a discussion of the way she'd saved their away team's lives with on the spot shuttlecraft repairs, "…I keep forgetting she's still a cadet."

"Aye, she's only that on paper, Sir. Think we're both well aware of it." Scotty answered, walking beside the Captain en route to the Engineering deck.

The Captain glanced back at him with a grin, "She's a great many things on paper, Scott. I could see her gunning for your job in a year. Almost makes me nervous to try and bring her onto Bridge crew."

Scoffing, Scotty answered, "Ye don't think she'd leave the dear engines like that, do ye? If there's anyone on this ship who loves these engines more than me, it's Jaylah."

"Is that right?" Jim quirked one of his handsome eyebrows and nodded with an approving nod, "…I suppose I could see that. I guess I'm just more fixed on the future for her. I could easily see her running a ship. She's a leader. If she's not down there gunning for your position, she'd be up there gunning for mine. Wouldn't have it any other way with her, though. She'll be one of Starfleet's best in short time."

"Aye," Scotty could never fight off how proud of her he was, not even if he'd wanted to—even now, coming on just a few short months of a year since meeting her, he still beamed at her talents. Some tried to skew the story as if he'd been her mentor—heck—she was far, far from a mere trainee, and he was even further from any sort of mentor.

"Still. Something about that girl. Just can't figure her out sometimes."

"Is that so?"

"I mean… every girl's got her secrets. Just a woman's sort of deal. Something about Jaylah, though. I want to figure it out. What is her secret?"

Scotty shrugged and lied, blatantly as they neared the lift, "…couldn't tell ye, Sir… she seems quite straightforward to me. Can't imagine 'er keepin' any sorta secret. She leaves her past in the past. It's what makes her so capable."

The lift doors whirred open. Jaylah's eyes glanced up to them both. Jim was so busy staring forward with all the intensity of his dreamy thoughts that he didn't notice her. Scotty, however, noticed Jaylah instantly, and she too, fixed her eyes on him, and then Jim, and then back to Scotty with mild tension.

"Yeah… at some point I'll figure her out. She's… some kind of cosmic puzzle. As if occupied by some pressing matter. Some kind of profound notion that only she could make heads or tails of. It's magnetic, Scotty. It truly is."

" _Welp,_ " Scotty shuffled into the lift quickly, as Jim rambled on his Jaylah-induced tangent (still entirely unaware of her presence a mere few meters away,) and said, "…this is my stop, Sir."

"…yes. Do give her my regards, Mister Scott. As you know, she's always on my mind. Can't figure her out for the life of me…"

"Will do!"

Jaylah kept her hands folded behind her back as she fixed her gaze downward, but stifled a quiet laugh.

That laugh burned down the tension like dry woods under fire. In an instant, all worry was mere ash. There was only Jaylah, beside him, looking up at him with a smile and eyes like two glittering suns. The doors were whirring shut, and before they were even fully closed, she'd pulled him—like metal to magnet—into a kiss that made everything around them nonexistent. There was only that brush of bodies, alone in the lift, hands around her waist, her arms around his shoulders, the wall against her back— _hers_ , for once—and in that secret moment only they knew existed, all was right with the universe.

No one else would or could know that moment happened. In another life, he may have been fine with that. But when the lift's doors opened and they pulled away, slightly disheveled, entirely aloof and unassuming, the reminder hit that _no one knew_.

 _No one knew_ and for some silly reason, that fact was drilling into his mind on some glitched loop.

Just a lover's secret, he mused. A secret that she slipped away into his quarters at night and disappeared before Alpha Shift, before he even woke, keeping up the secret's illusion that _nothing existed._

Of course, it didn't hurt.

 _It hurts like hell._

She kissed away that hurt, though, every time. Every moment he thought the feeling was welling up to the surface, becoming too much for him _not_ to mention—she _silenced_ those concerns with her kisses, her teeth, her cruel and beautiful grin when she got him pinned to the bed, she _silenced_ those aches with her body against his, bare and beautiful and heated with wanton need.

There were weeks where he was sure she'd forgotten she even lived anywhere else but his quarters—he certainly forgot—and when she finally did return to her own bed, that empty place beside him had a way of sucking his very soul in like some kind of black hole.

Only once did their secrecy falter, when he walked back with her to her quarters one evening, after sharing drinks in the ten forward. That ensign who had spied them the first time, her roommate, had once again stumbled in to the sight of them falling haphazardly into a tumble of kisses and touches. Having forgotten they were in Jaylah's quarters, having become so used to the privacy of his bedroom, they may have stolen away to her own tiny bed if only for a moment, had the quiet ensign not tiptoed past the corner of their sight, trying her damndest not to be caught up in their personal storm.

He'd pulled away for just a second to point to the ensign—who stopped with a salute and, "Sir!"—and, between Jaylah's feverish, craving kisses, managed to say, "Ye din't… din't see me… was… never here…"

 _Keep it up, you lovesick git._

Of course he would keep it up. Without question, he would keep it up. Opening the door to his quarters (coming back a bit later from Beta Shift than he'd expected) he found Jaylah waiting for him in the lounge area of his quarters—dressed down and doing that _thing_ again, biting her lower lip—and he knew, he would happily, recklessly, ardently keep up this lovesick madness.

She climbed his arms as she always did, pulling him into another sordid storm of love bites and a thunderous music. Her smile was the visage of some angel, seared into his mind, and each kiss planted along the apex of her thighs was a reverent taste of heaven. Beats and shouting were the choir of praises that drowned out any rational thought in his mind—love was like a religion to a lonesome soul.

The rare giggle, carried on her voice, surprisingly girlish and found only at the heart of her sanctuary of noise, felt like something only he truly knew. The half-moan, half-sigh when her fingers traced through his hair as his tongue crossed silken warmth.

"She kept asking me questions, how long it'd been going on, how 'far' we'd gone, it… it was very strange. Is this a human curiosity or just a Miranda curiosity?" Jaylah asked as Scotty traced kisses down her neck and across her collar. She sighed, tracing her fingertips over his shoulders.

"I wanna say it's a Miranda curiosity… but really… probably a human curiosity. We're nosy bastards. Always lookin' fer answers where we aren't invited." Scotty said with a grin.

Pinned between his body and the leather of the sofa, he felt her back arch when his lips caressed a sweet spot that made her gasp. The moan that followed was enough to encourage him to linger long enough to paint a mark on her moon-white skin to match the myriad she'd left on his own neck. Her legs tightened around his shoulders as he suckled smooth, porcelain skin.

"She— _ahh!_ — she kept asking about you, she kept asking about size? I do not understand this… _Hnn…_ "

Scotty paused, trying his hardest not to laugh.

"…oh, heck. What did ye say?"

"Well, it should be obvious? You are at least 178 centimeters tall?"

His half-snorting, half laughing was barely muffled into her thigh. Jaylah asked, confused, "…what is so funny?"

"Nothing!" Scotty lied, red, all the way to his ears.

"I do not understand this obsession with size? Shouldn't she be able to guess by looking?"

Another, longer snorting cackle followed, which he tried his hardest not to laugh.

"Why are you laughing? What am I misunderstanding?" Jaylah demanded.

"Nothing!" Scotty tried again, figuratively dying, "…but thank ye. Thanks for that."

"What is so funny!?"

"Never change, Jaylah."

"Why would I change? I am confused by this."

Calming, finally, still trying to fight off how amused he'd been by her clueless response, he kissed his way back to her core.

"Sometimes people change," Scotty his lips still brushing against her like sleepy, gentle kiss. Her back arched and her fingertips traced along his neck with a tender sort of grace, drawing him closer. Her body curled slightly, grinding her hips in a teasing motion. It was enough to elicit a wanting sigh from him. _Heaven above, don't ever let this girl change._

"I… do not understand that. I will not change… I have no reason to change…"

Secrecy could only go on so long. Tip-toed paths out of his bed in the mornings could only go on for so long, before someone noticed the frequency of her presence in the Officers' residential floor.

Secrecy could only go on for so long, when all he wanted was to stop lying when Bones or Sulu made jokes about his "relationship" with Jaylah in the ten forward. When all he wanted was to work beside her, occasionally allowing himself to be distracted by her intensity, without the worry that another crewman might tease, "…stop gaping at your girlfriend, Scott!"

"She's not, she's not my…!" He'd yell—never quite able to finish that sentence, despite Jaylah's smirk as she pretended not to notice.

"Torque." She said, one hand held out his way.

"Trade ye for that arc welder."

Unclasping the device from her belt, she made the trade, going back to work without as much as a glance his way, as though they weren't going to be screaming each other's names a few short hours from that moment in the sort of lustful maelstrom his bedroom had become well-acquainted with in the recent weeks.

They were on that catwalk again, repairing a burned out bulkhead that had suffered circuit damages under an overheated electrical grid section. Approximately three and a half weeks had passed since they last met there, under the pretense of uncertainty. Now, there was certainly _certainty_ —heavy, heated, distracting _certainty_ —that they were there for one another, that they would push and shove aside all others just to work beside each other like a pair of inseparable, red-shirted lovebirds on a high perch.

"Normally that costs a kiss… but I'll give it to you at a discount this time." Jaylah smirked.

Keenser waddled by, grumbling under his breath, " _Girlfriends_ ," and Scotty growled back at him, "Git… git back ta work! We're not _girlfriends!"_

Cackling as he left, Keenser only waved them off and continued on his path.

"Thank you, girlfriend." Jaylah said, accepting the torque wrench from him.

"No problem, girlfriend." Scotty answered, feigning a southern dialect like a drunken Bones.

She laughed.

They went on in light silence for a moment longer, before he confessed, "…it's getting' harder ta lie about it."

She slowed, but she did not respond.

"…it's like…" Scotty sighed, still working at the lower end of the bulkhead—he lowered the safety visor, and reached over, lowering hers out of reflex, as the welding device flashed to life—"…thank you," she said—"…it's like I really, _really_ want to stop sayin' yer not m'girlfriend."

"That is what we are? Girlfriends?"

Scotty snorted, grinning wide under his dark visor, "…aye, alright then, _girlfriends_. Yer about the only girl this side of Jupiter I'd say I'm a girlfriend to. But alright. I guess if ye want, that's what we are, then, I'll be yer girlfriend if ye want, Lassie. Really flattered, yannoe."

"Did you just trick me into saying we are girlfriends?"

"Aye, maybe a bit, there."

Jaylah shook her head, but she was smiling, "…I like it. Girlfriends, then."

"I mean… that is, yannoe, if… if ye're alright with it not bein' a secret."

"It will not be a problem with regulations, will it?"

Scotty shrugged, more optimistic that morning than he probably should have been—but oh, at this point, he was desperate to end the charade of nonchalance between them, "…maybe a bit. But nothin' that can't be solved with words."

"I would be very unhappy if it led to my being reassigned or stationed back on Yorktown for the duration of my education."

"Aye. I would be, too." Scotty said, behind a small blossom of sparks, "…but… ye won't be. Yer a part of the crew here."

"I am glad for this," Jaylah answered softly, "…this place… with you… it is the only place I would like to be."

"But, really, ye… ye gotta stay with me through the night, at least once? Kinna kills me a bit wakin' up alone. Never know if I upset ye or not. I'm crazy about ye, but, I… I'm still learnin' ta read ya, Lassie."

He snuffed out the arc welder's light and lifted his visor to look over at Jaylah. She'd turned to him first, in her way of staring, her way of catching him in a magnetic pull. Her way of absent-mindedly forgetting her visor was still down as she neared him.

"…I am still afraid."

"There isn't—there isn't a damned thing to be afraid of. Ye know, I, I want to be with ye, Jaylah. Not just here, but… I dunno, maybe, maybe on Earth someday, too. Maybe anywhere ye wanna go. Come ta find out, I don't really care where it is I go, as long as I go with you."

Some lovebirds die when separated—he'd thought it an old wives' tale, but in his one experience with them, he'd seen it and he never wanted to see it again. He could still remember the way they chirped in time with one another, in his mother's living room, in their tiny home by the window. The gate to their little cage was always open—his mother let them roam free, and they would never go too far from one another. His sister's cat had got one, broken its neck—it's mate died within the week. He had been twelve when that happened, and thought very little of it at the time.

It was odd how such a thought had a way of bubbling back up in adulthood. He thought about it nonstop in the weeks after his first wife left him—when _Glynnis_ decided, "I need some time away."

She never did come back. Nor did Emma, who had said she'd meet him at the altar, but never showed.

Each time, he was sure he'd die, just like that lovebird he found, dead in its empty home, on a cold Sunday morning.

Both times, he'd lived.

"…I would like to go to Earth with you, Montgomery Scotty." Jaylah said, "…and everywhere else."

She watched him for a moment, and through the dark visor, he saw the gentleness in her features. The high noon sunlight of her eyes were a softened sunset, warm, welcoming over cold, sterile winter hues.

"Yer, ah, yer visor's still…" Scotty murmured as she leaned closer, the way she did when she sought to tackle and claim him in one of her ferocious (and all too welcome) kisses.

Jaylah snorted and laughed, reaching half-mindedly for the visor. He reached for it, raising the visor like some thin, plastic veil. He hadn't noticed the small oil smudge on her cheek until then.

"Thank you." Jaylah's voice was light and airy— _happy_. Like that small smudge of oil on her snowy skin, happiness also, was wonderful on her. He could give the entire universe to see her like this, every day, for the rest of his life.

Keenser was walking past them again, speaking with someone—and in hindsight, Scotty wished, he'd paid attention to that one passing detail.

But he didn't.

"Of c'erse." Scotty answered, all of drunk on her presence.

Her eyes flit sideward for a moment, and for that moment, she was all impossibly long, smoky lashes and some coquettish _je ne sais quoi_. When she looked back to him again, her voice came softly, "…I love you, Montgomery Scotty."

They were a perfect fit—be it their bodies together in his bed, or her cheek, soft against the palm of his hand when he stroked the stray tresses from her face. His words were soft against her lips, as he answered, "I love you, always."

Still, at times, he wondered if this were just some dream he would wake up from. A dream from which he'd awake, cold, and alone in his bed, maybe even in some alternate timeline where he never met Jaylah, where she may not even exist. He couldn't stand the idea that such a universe could exist without her. But it likely did—and he had nothing but sorrow for the version of himself that led life without her. That was certainly a universe where the old story of lovebirds dying truly _was_ a wives' tale.

There was a sense of mourning for that lonesome self who would never know the feel of her lips—sometimes soft, sometimes dry, with chapped lips that scratch as soft as feathers or with the scent of lavender or vanilla at the nape of her neck, or whatever wild venom he craved from the sharp prick of her teeth. In that universe he may have never known the way the lights around them both had a way of falling into blurry, ethereal haze when their lips parted, or the way her taste lingered on his tongue well into his dreams. He'd always dream about lights. Lights in every fractal fragment of the spectrum, cut through by thick black lines.

"Fraunhofer lines…" Scotty murmured aloud, lips against hers.

"…what?"

Scotty glanced sideward for a moment and shook the thought aside, "Nothing, nothing."

"Captain." Keenser interrupted, passing by them again. Confused, Scotty glanced at the Roylan—happy, now, not to pull away from Jaylah in some shy excuse for hiding their affection—and answered, "Wha...?"

Keenser pointed back toward the catwalk's end.

Both Scotty and Jaylah turned to see Jim in an awkward half step toward them, frozen at the confusing sight of them in one another's arms. He must have come up just as they had kissed. His expression was unreadable, barricaded, stoic, but… it only served to bury a sensation Scotty knew all too well, one he'd have never wished on his worst enemy.

Jim was far from any sort of enemy, irritant at times or not.

"Sir!" Scotty and Jaylah blurted in unison, standing.

Jim seemed to look past them, still feigning his best (shoddy) attempt at looking entirely unaffected by what he'd just walked in on, "Scott. Didn't expect to see you up here."

"Were ye lookin' fer someone in particular?" Scotty reflexively answered, perhaps with a bit more hostility than he intended.

"I was." Jim said, still lingering by the steps at the end of the catwalk, "…however, I didn't mean to intrude on… whatever it was I intruded on. My apologies. I was hoping to speak with you, Jaylah."

It was inevitable that Jim would eventually know about the two of them, Scotty thought.

"Is it an urgent matter?" Jaylah asked.

Jim looked to be pondering this question for a moment, before he shook his head and said, "…I guess it really isn't. I'll let you get back to work."

The Captain left as quietly as he'd arrived, with little other word, not even as much as another glance in their direction. It was only when Jim had disappeared that Scotty realized his hand had been gripped tight in Jaylah's throughout the entirety of that moment. There was no turning back now.

Jaylah seemed unfazed by the whole moment. Her face was sometimes like stone—it was cold and stoic when she was guarded, when she was combative. When she was ready to stand her ground.

It would not be until hours later, when he glimpsed at a message on the PADD's softly-lit screen that he realized he, too, may have to stand his ground.

 _A word with you, Scott. 0700. Gymnasium._

"Oh, heck."


	4. 22 - 24

22.

For a long time, Scotty wasn't sure if he should take that message seriously or as if it were some kind of joke. _Of course he should take it seriously_ , he thought, _this was a message from the Captain_ , although… there was a slightly juvenile aspect to it that he'd been certain Jim had grown out of in the last few years. Perhaps this was a misunderstanding. Perhaps it really was "just a word" Jim wanted with him. Still. He'd had enough brawls in his youth that started with a similar string of text.

 _1900._

It was still 1639. There was time for this to all blow over. Perhaps even be forgotten. How much reprimand would he face if he simply didn't show? After all, keeping the engines purring like they do was what he was there for. He fixated on that.

He and Jaylah handled a panel refitting, working just as fluidly as ever.

For a moment, a thought crossed his mind— _"…I didn't ask for the 1412-welder, when did she hand me this…?"_ —and at another moment, another thought crossed his mind when she crossed behind him and left a EJ-7 interlock beside him without a word. Lucky guess, perhaps. Engineer's intuition, maybe, if that were a thing.

There was a small electrical system malfunction in Jeffries Tube 17—a data transfer malfunction followed that put out all of the lifts on the ship (probably an overheated power bank, he imagined.) Well, on second thought, _small_ proved to be an understatement, the more he saw reports of shipwide lift issues filtering in.

Time to fix it.

"There's five points of potential power bank failures in Jeffries Tube 17 alone, Sir. Then the possibility that the issue we had in Tube 16 may be related to it, and could benefit from diagnostics," Yeoman Marlowe said, reading off notes from his PADD.

Jaylah was quiet beside him, still entirely unaware of the Captain's message tumbling through Scotty's mind. He glanced her way, leaning toward her a bit with a friendly, but quiet, _"Yoo-hoo, Lassie?"_

She appeared to come out of her trance and gave a quick smile before turning away. He was still figuring her out sometimes, Scotty noted. Occasionally she would space out and, for a brief moment, appear sullen and almost empty. Once in a blue moon, he thought—but she would always snap back to reality as if he'd imagined it.

When Jaylah looked back at him again, met his gaze as he watched with one quirked eyebrow, she gave him a playful punch on the shoulder, "You are staring. Get back to work."

Back to work.

 _Aye_.

The Jeffries Tubes. Marlowe reading off notes that Scotty would have to re-read quickly after the momentary distraction. He could think of only a handful of other apt Yeomen who did well in confined spaces like that—they had to be small and nimble, and most of all, as far from claustrophobic as possible. Both factors ruled him as the very last option, depending on how _done_ with the ship's glitches he was on any particular day.

"Right, then. Tube 16, I want Freeman on diagnostics. Tube 17, banks A through C, I want Welles, and banks D through G, Jaylah."

Jaylah nodded.

Marlowe confirmed, noting the order of operations in the PADD and answered, "I'll have them sent up right away. Miss Jaylah?"

Jaylah followed the officer, not once looking back. Something didn't sit right, though.

He couldn't quite pinpoint it.

The power outages in the lift systems were common enough—about once a year, the banks seemed to overheat somehow, and it seemed neither refit nor reconstruction could solve old glitches. Something wasn't sitting right, though, about this entire shift. The surrealism of it all, from the moment Jim left, to the moment he opened a communication line with the two yeomen and the cadet who were climbing Jeffries Tubes 16 and 17.

At some point, he noted he was entirely aware of how many minutes had passed since Jaylah stepped away with Marlowe. Thirty-four minutes. No matter, he was focused, for that moment, on balancing the energy transfer rates through Pylon 2—run of the mill maintenance—and for some reason, he felt a cold sheen of sweat on his brow and dampness in his palms. Fear. For little to _no reason_.

Fifty-two minutes. He was walking with Keenser and Dougherty, discussing—absently, stammering—the power upflow rate being higher than usual in the transfer coils. It was likely leading to the systems overheating in the Tubes and potentially frying other key banks on the ship. Felt a bit dizzy. Odder, yet.

 _Jaylah, where are you?_

She was in Tube 17, probably climbing past Yeoman Welles up for power banks D through G. Just as planned. _No issue_ , he reminded himself, _she's fine_ , he reassured himself. Except, somehow, he felt that indisputably, _it was an issue._

He slowed, falling behind Marlowe and Keenser. Keenser glanced back first, before Marlowe stopped and asked, "…Sir?"

"I'm fine. Go on. I'm going ta check up on the Yeomen in th'Tubes." Scotty answered.

Of course that's all it was. Checking up on the Yeomen.

Checking up on _Jaylah._

Something wasn't right at all.

"Freeman here, nothing out of sorts to report," Freeman answered cooly, as he often did—he was clear on screen, despite the dark lighting of Tube 16, working diligently on administering diagnostics to the Tube's power bank. Freeman was fine.

"Roger that, Sir. Everything's typical around here. A bit of system overheating in power bank b, but I suspect the shortage might be further up. Check with Jaylah?" Welles said, when he contacted her—she always managed a sunny smile, even in the most cramped underbellies of the smallest Jeffries tubes.

Check with Jaylah.

He swallowed dryly, sending a contact ping her way. Jaylah did not respond.

His heart was already racing, and this was categorically _not_ the time for her to be too busy to answer.

 _Jaylah, what are you doing?_

Another contact ping.

Still, no response.

Surely there was no issue that would endanger her any more than Welles or Freeman—and she must have only been about twenty-one meters above Welles at this point, may be much higher in the tube. The infrastructure guided Tube 17 through what many called the "spine" of the ship, and she was just sixteen meters shy of the saucer's binds.

Upon that realization, Scotty recalled a time that he'd been in one of the "spine's" tubes, a particularly cramped one, just moments before the ship went on red alert from an oncoming attack in Klingon territory. Rushing out of there had been a nightmare—especially on the realization that certain tubes would be open ducts into space, should the saucer detach for any emergency reason. Perhaps that was a nightmare scenario he'd not thought of since that instance, dropping down through the tube's ladders as fast as he could, praying they didn't have to initiate saucer separation while the engine decks took massive damage from said attack.

Those thoughts were welling up in his mind like bad memories.

That had been the very last time he forced himself to climb a Jeffries Tube.

His hand hesitated over the call command—perhaps Jaylah was just busy.

Perhaps she wasn't.

Perhaps she needed help.

He knew Jaylah—she never asked for help when she needed it. Perhaps that was the one thing that held her back in all of her accomplishments, all of her glory, all of her skill, it was that _something_ that barred her from simple words when she needed to speak them the most.

Scotty palmed softly at his face, a sigh crossing his lips as he tried to think of some way to contact her, short of climbing up there himself— _why was he so worried for her, suddenly?_ —he glimpsed his own PADD lying near the control panel.

A third contact ping followed. This time, not from the Engineering Deck's Comm System, but from his own PADD's identifier code. Jaylah would know it—heaven knows they'd sent enough messages to one another by this time.

She answered, finally. Audio only.

"Scotty…?"

Her voice was low and exhausted—he could hear her breaths. They were heavy, as though weighed down under some unseen _something_ he felt all too familiar with. She swallowed hard, and she continued, "…power bank… power bank D has no issue. I-I'm moving on toward bank E."

She should have been at E a long time ago.

"There… there were mild traces of heat damage on bank D's panel, but I've addressed the issue and lowered the input-output ratios to Starfleet's defaults…" Jaylah sighed and he could almost feel a smile forming on her face as she added, breathlessly, "…we really need to… need to stop overclocking this system."

"Is everything alright?"

"Everything is fine." Her voice was trembling. He could hear her footsteps and her hands gripping the ladder as she climbed.

It didn't sound fine—not in the slightest.

The steps stopped. There was silence for a moment. He fixated on her breaths, coming from the small PADD in his hands. Everything in that moment seemed fixed on the PADD in his hands, it's light, the rise and fall of the soundwaves from Jaylah's breaths—everything around him felt darkened, inconsequential, almost nonexistent. _Confining_.

"Are ye sure yer fine, Lassie?"

Jaylah hesitated and then answered, "…I will finish this task, Montgomery Scotty. It's… it is just a bit smaller in here than I expected."

A voice came from Engineering's main control panel—Welles—"Mister Scott, I've got a critical error in bank C."

His rational mind would have jumped straight to Welles—but rationale was out the window at this point as he spoke through the PADD, for Jaylah, "You're getting claustrophobic. Come down from there, Lassie."

Jaylah wasn't answering. But he could hear her breathing. He could feel panic rising, perhaps a sympathetic response, perhaps his own worry for her.

Turning back to comms with Welles, Scotty answered, "What do ye got, Welles?"

"There's a blown moderator in C's externa—"

Static.

Scotty glanced upward as the lighting system flickered in Engineering's main decks. _Heck._

Whatever power surge was brewing, it wasn't going to be good.

"Welles?" Scotty called.

Marlowe was rushing toward him, "Sir! Sir, we've got power systems failing on the science deck and communication errors with the Bridge—there's a runaway grid failure stemming from T17-C and T17-E, which, consequently," Marlowe gestured overhead, "…Sir, if we don't get these banks rebooted and back online, we're going to be seeing a hell of a lot more issues than just the lighting as the other banks take on double, triple their allotted datastream load to compensate."

"Communications with Welles is shot. Marlowe, keep an eye on the Yeomen and Cadet from here. I'm going up there." Scotty crossed by Marlowe, gritting his teeth. He _hated_ these damned tubes. Crossing by Dougherty, he ordered, "Dougherty, keep an eye on those coils and reroute excess power into auxiliary units before this place lights up like a bloody Christmas tree!"

Welles was up there, though, and unaccounted for.

 _Jaylah_ was up there. Refusing communication. Acting with far more abandon than he was used to. Something wasn't right—and it wasn't just with the ship.

Scotty had seen two corridors lose complete lighting power by the time he reached the entrance to tube 17. A Yeoman with a flashlight saluted as he passed, all of ignored as Scotty made way for the ladder. Tube 17 went up the ship's spine—a one-way trek that would inevitably have him cross paths with Welles. The Yeoman followed close behind him. He'd made only one further attempt to contact Jaylah before setting off for the power bank from which he'd last heard Welles—again, unanswered.

Tube 17 was a tight mess of loose cables and wiring that only got messier as they progressed, meters and meters from the topmost Engineering decks. Power flickered in and out, before pulsing several weak times and going out entirely. There was a dim white light, far, far up above from which he could see one shadow, still amidst the ladder and wiring, illuminated in flickers of light like tiny bursts of lightning in a distant storm—Welles.

Focus on that light.

Focus on that shadow.

 _Get_ to that shadow.

They reached her, only to find the petite girl unconscious and the scent of static heavy in the cramped, hot air. Scotty unfastened the Yeoman's security clasps and guided the unconscious girl back down to the Yeoman who followed, "Get her to sickbay, have paneling gear up hear ASAP, get everyone on Decks 37 and below to shift power to rate-0.3, lower if any systems can manage it," he instructed, looking over the blown bank paneling. Disabling it, he made another attempt to contact Jaylah, this time from his communicator.

"Come on, answer me, Lassie…" Scotty pleaded as he climbed upward through a mess of thick, hot cables. He hadn't realized just how much these tubes got him shaking in his goddamn boots. He wasn't usually the claustrophobic sort, by any means—but somehow, the tubes got to him, _every time_.

They were getting to him now, the further the Yeomen climbed away from him, the more he became just a single climbing body moving up through hundreds of meters of ladder and tunnel.

The Yeoman and Welles were already a long distance below and behind him when Jaylah finally answered the umpteenth ping, and he could hear her breathing had hastened and voice had gone from subtle tremble to full quake as she answered, "Cu…rrently rerouting power streams from bank E to auxiliary banks E-1 through E-4. A bit dark up… up here."

Rerouting to the auxiliary… heck, she just bought them more time than he thought. It would only last for so long before bank E blew just like C did, though. He could tell that Welles had been attempting to activate the auxiliary banks before the main panel burst.

"Good. Aye, good work, just… just keep activating the auxiliary banks—if you can get up to auxiliary 7 online, it should buy us enough time to get bank C repaired and runnin'."

A quivering sigh as Jaylah answered, "Understood. Over an—"

"Jaylah, I'm at bank C. I'm coming up."

"Don't. It's… it is small up here."

Scotty felt the ghost of a smirk trace his features as he tried to answer jokingly, "…Ye callin' me fat, Lassie?"

There was no smarmy response, no playful quip. His smirk dissolved slowly as he heard only her breaths ghosting over silence.

"I… it is not sufficient space for two to work. I… I calculated my effectiveness in this task poorly. I am sorry, Scotty. I will do my best and finish this."

What?

"All the more reason for me ta help ye, then." Scotty said, continuing his climb, "…and Lassie, don't ever let me hear ye say that about yer effectiveness again."

"…Scotty," Jaylah responded, "…please…"

"I'm not makin' ye do this alone, yer claustrophobic and yer havin' an episode up there, and I'm not makin' ye go through this alone."

The lights from above were obscured by cables and one single shadow—Jaylah.

She was very still, far up ahead. Occasionally he could see her arms moving and a soft flicker of light. It was difficult to make out shapes among the shadows of a cable web and mechanical tendrils all around her. Even now, climbing her way, Scotty was brushing away cables as if he were forcing his way through some wilderness.

He was finally close enough to call out to Jaylah without the communicator, "Jaylah! I'm here, just… just trade places with me, I'll handle the rest of this."

No response. Of course. Of course, no response. She hated failure. She rarely made bad calls, but he could tell that when she did, it bruised her ego. Jaylah did not concede defeat. If there was any one thing that occasionally sobered him out of his typical state of Jaylah-worship, it was her pride.

He felt tension in every one of his muscles just tightening as he neared her—and hell, she was so damned still from a distance, but visibly shaking the closer he got. He slowed as he approached.

Heck, this wasn't good.

"Jaylah?"

"I'm… I am almost finished with this!" Jaylah answered reaching out, working quickly.

"Stop forcing yerself."

"I-I am not f-forcing myself." She was _crying_.

Scotty reached out, tugging playfully at her ankle, "Jaylah, love—"

A scream—Jaylah jerked her leg away faster than Scotty could react—she dropped something, a wrench, and it went tumbling down the tube, echoing as it rattled against the walls, chasing after her rippling cry. Scotty himself had torn away from her at the violent reaction, narrowly missing a kick in the face and paling at the surge of fear inside of himself.

Perhaps it was the way Jaylah's scream echoed inside of the Jeffries Tube—perhaps it reminded him of some horrid nightmare he didn't recall having—but something about that scream put him in a different place, if only for a moment.

A place that was pitch black, save for a few small bright lights in a tendril-obscured distance. A scent like Altamid, heady on his mind filtered through his senses, and that _scream_ , it carried the cries of far more souls than just Jaylah.

 _The hell was that?_

For a moment, he was in another place entirely. He was certain of it.

Regathering his senses, he looked back up to Jaylah, who was clinging to the ladder, shaking, choking back sobs and burying her face against her knuckles as her shoulders quaked.

"God… Jaylah, please, yer alright, I promise ye, yer alright, just, just come down…" Scotty glanced downward, at the empty drop beneath them and then back up to Jaylah's silhouette and the rippling pulse of light far above.

Jaylah shook her head and choked back another muffled sob, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I am fine."

"I'm coming up, alright…" Scotty ventured, "…promise me ye won't kick or kill me, Lassie?"

Jaylah nodded, "I did… I did not mean to do that."

"I know ye didn't." Scotty replied, carefully, as he did his best to fit beside her and reach around her for the power bank's open panel. He worked at the auxiliary functions quickly, eying her from the side with caution. With her body so close to his, he felt her body shaking as though she were stranded in the ice desert of Delta Vega. Sweat glistened on her features as she breathed deep and carefully, squeezing her eyes shut.

Silence fell over them for a time, before she said again, "I am sorry, Scotty."

"Stop sayin' that. It's not yer fault, I should'a thought about sendin' ye up here."

"I-I would have volunteered. I did not… did not know I-I would become so afraid."

"Hold this," Scotty said, handing Jaylah an interlock device, and then guiding her hand back to the panel, "…I need ye to keep this steady. Can ye do that fer me?"

Jaylah nodded, "Of course I can."

"Can ye get the stream filters connected?"

Jaylah nodded, shifting as best she could, her small body crunched up beside him in the tight tunnel, _"Of course I can!"_

A small smile crossed his features as her familiar fire warmed its way back into her once-frozen form—he too, felt a cold layer of fear that had settled over him begin to melt away.

"I know ye can."

Jaylah did not answer.

Working beside Jaylah in silence was a sensation he was categorically unfamiliar with—uncomfortable with, even. She always spoke. _They_ always spoke.

"Ye know, I'm terrified of these things. If the saucer separates while anyone's in here— _fwoop_ —sucked right out inta space like through a vacuum tube." Scotty said.

"That does not bother me much."

He glanced over at her with a raised brow and said, "Doesn't bother ye?! That's a horrible way ta die!"

Jaylah shrugged, "There are worse ways."

"Okay, like what?"

Jaylah was silent for a beat, before answering quietly, "…Sulu's discourse on soap operas. I did not know… how much I never wanted to know about soap operas until that conversation happened."

Scoffing, Scotty nodded, "Aye, I kin agree with that. Had that conversation once, took about 4 years off me life, it did."

"I do not understand the appeal."

"He once explained to me the entire family tree of that… that wild family from _Royals of Fhloston Paradise_. Ye know that show spans six generations? _Six_. Sulu told me _all about everyone_. In _great detail_. I dinnae have grey hairs before that day, Lassie. I didn't."

She was smiling again, tooth, fang, her voice coming quietly as she added, "Well… _Fhloston Paradise_ was alright."

"Nae." Disbelief at the thought of Jaylah sitting long enough to watch anything, much less a soap opera—perhaps he could imagine it in the background of her room while she was buried in books. Hardly even acknowledged.

"Oh, yes. I might have watched some of that at Mister Sulu's recommendation. Two or three seasons."

"…I dinnae even know ye."

" _Fhloston Paradise_ was nothing. When he explained the entirety of _Times on Metaluna_ to me, though… at least _Fhloston_ was all about one family. What was it they say back in the Academy? _Times on Metaluna_ was a Romeo and Juliet story. A very long… very… very… long, boring Romeo and Juliet story. With a lot of Juliets and a lot of Romeos. I lost count three episodes in."

"Dinnae even know ye," Scotty repeated, shaking his head with mock-disdain.

He saw a faint smile at the corners of her mouth. It was a much-needed sight, against the dried tear streaks on her cheeks. Scotty had paused, then, if only to brush stray, gossamer tresses from her face as she looked back at him—he was only _just_ learning to read her, he realized.

This look, this face, these eyes—she looked at him like this once before. When they broke through the atmosphere of Altamid, on the rickety Franklin, when he reached over to help unfasten her safety belts as she gazed into space in shock. She had looked at him just like this when she finally tore her gaze away from the distant planet—that prison—as it fell away behind the starship Franklin.

Those scars were still open wounds that bled just as much these days as they did back then, he realized—and for all the times he'd seen her bare, beautiful body, he'd never once realized just how many scars she bore.

"We're almost done up here. Ye alright to climb down?"

Jaylah nodded.

"Ye can go down ahead of me. I've got the rest of this."

"I want to help you."

"Alright, then."

And help she did.

He'd only realized, then, that any hand she needed, his hand was already there, and any tool he needed, she'd already placed in his hand. He'd forgotten what it was like to ask. By the time the auxiliary banks were active and the lights were flashing back to life, he'd forgotten how much _fear_ he'd carried when he'd climbed up that ladder.

They climbed back down together—Jaylah brushed his arm aside with feigned annoyance when he tried to carry her down, she could do it herself, she insisted—and he silently mulled over the fear he'd witnessed in her that he hadn't thought possible on Jaylah.

As they walked back together, through corridors and amongst the crewmen running routine diagnostics, post-grid failure, he fixed his gaze on the way she walked—head held high, chin up, _armored_.

None would ever guess she'd ever felt fear in her life.

Just like he'd never guessed she'd felt terror in such a way, until just moments before.

The walls were back up, to everyone around them. Except for him, as they walked with the tips of their fingers intertwined.

Time crossed his mind—it was nearing 1900, with a few minutes to spare. He was not far from Jim's designated meeting place. Perhaps he'd humor the joke, Scotty thought. It couldn't possibly be any worse than saving the ship from a gradual shipwide power failure. Heck, he thought, Jim was probably elsewhere entirely, tending to more important matters.

He slowed, and Jaylah glanced back at their joined hands at first, then back to him, a puzzled expression on her features.

"…Lassie, Jim needs me at 1900. Yer gonna be alright?"

Jaylah answered quickly, "Of course I will be alright. I… I do not often become frightened like I did before. It is passed now. I am well enough to return to my duties."

"…right. We'll talk about this later?"

"Later." Jaylah answered with some hesitation—she didn't want to talk about it. He couldn't blame her for it.

He'd have rather stayed with Jaylah—still slightly wary of leaving her to her thoughts and devices. If only for the fact that imagining her in a state like before pained him terribly. Jaylah was already taking her leave down the corridor, without as much as a goodbye. It almost caught Scotty off-guard, before he waved after her.

"Ah, w-wait, hey!"

She turned back to him, tilting her head slightly in confusion.

"I'll see ye in a bit, then?" Scotty said.

A smile was creeping on her features again as she eyed him with curiosity, "…yes?"

"…I…" Fidgeting, Scotty glimpsed around and then added, "…I love ye."

Amused, Jaylah answered, "…yes, I know this? You are strange, Montgomery Scotty."

Must have been a cultural or linguistic difference. Still—she had a way of looking at him before she went about her way, eyes glittering gold over a smile. Long white hair swayed behind her as she walked and he watched until she disappeared around the corridor.

He loved her. She knew. He was strange. That was alright, then.

23.

The gymnasium was a short distance from where he'd parted ways with Jaylah. He arrived at 1904 and a mild compulsive habit in the back of his mind was going crazy at that four-minute delay. Inside, the facility was all of empty and cleared. He was not sure what to expect, but Bones sitting at the edge, poring over something on his PADD was the last thing he expected. Furthermore, Bones glancing up from said PADD and greeting Scotty with a rather devilish grin was all of _entirely_ unsettling.

"Ah, I see you've made it, Mister Scott." Bones said, "…had a feeling you weren't going to show. You're normally so punctual."

"Was a wee bit occupied—yannoe, keepin' the ship from power failure and, oh, I suppose kinna keepin' us all alive, but. Yannoe. No big deal."

"Ah, yes. The lower decks were rather inconvenienced by those power outages."

"…power outages. Aye. Just power outages. No run-away power processing issues or anythin' that… yannoe, could be potentially life-threatening to the whole o'the ship or anythin'." Scotty made a forced smile, "…pardon me if I'm a wee bit short here, but I just had ta pull myself through a Jeffries Tube that had less legroom than a bloody school bus."

Bones made a straight-faced sort of grin, as though no snark that crossed Scotty's lips could deter him from whatever was in store. Whatever this was, Bones was in on it.

"Ye mind tellin' me what this is all about? Gymnasium's an awfully strange place for a _word_. By the way, I dinnae remember seein' yer name on the guest list?"

"Oh, I was invited. Cordially."

"Cordially."

"Don't be too alarmed by Bones being here, Mister Scott—it was advised that a medical professional be on site for the ritual." Jim's voice came.

What.

Scotty glanced over to Jim, stepping out onto the sparring mats in lightweight CQC gear. The Captain stretched and cracked his shoulders loudly.

"Ritual…?"

"Ritual." Bones repeated, eyes back on his PADD as he explained, "…according to Starfleet Regulation 1927-C, resolutions to personnel versus personnel conflicts are permitted only on the basis of long-standing cultural rituals, including but not limited to psychological, nutritional, neuro-electric, or physical combat. On the condition that medical personnel be on-site."

"…nutritional combat?"

"That, you'll have to ask Keenser about." Bones shrugged, "…I can only tell you so much. I'm a doctor, not an anthropologist. Luckily, the long-standing Reedollian practice here is just a run of the mill beat down, or… something like that. Just as luckily, an addendum to this regulation notes, _barring deathmatches_."

"Wait…" Scotty said, quietly, flatly, before side-eying Bones and then Jim, "… _waait…_ "

"It seems we've fallen in love with the same girl, Scotty." Jim said, coming closer with each step—increasingly more intimidating with each step—as he explained, "…a certain Reedollian girl, with whom we are _both_ quite smitten. Now… unless you aren't already aware, there are certain _aggressive_ norms in Reedollian behavior. Some of this stemming from the very roots of Reedollian evolution, glorified in culture, in ritual."

"I'm mostly here as a witness, but also to document this on a purely scientific level." Bones shrugged, "…we'd have asked Mister Spock, but let's face it, I'm better qualified to work with human anatomy, in the off-chance things get messy, bloody, or dislocated."

"…waaaait!"

"Now, I don't know about you, Mister Scott, but I've done nothing but immerse myself in Reedollian culture, practices, norms—I want to know everything about where Jaylah comes from, who she is. It is only fitting that, by the norms of her species, her people's practices, the strongest suitor fights for her affection, her courtship, her hand in marriage."

"Marriage…?"

"Well, the Reedollian equivalent of," Bones interjected to explain, "…firstly, all male, female, or ambiguously-gendered suitors interested in the same partner are made to fight to either death, incapacitation, or a simple surrender and the last one standing gets the girl, as it were." Bones explained, not once looking up from his PADD, "Jim came to me. Heartbroken. In tears—"

Jim interrupted, "…I was not in tears."

Bones continued, "…in _tears_ , Mister Scott, because he'd realized his happy little zebra cake was spoken for. As per ritual of _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_ ," Bones glanced down at the PADD, voicelessly mouthing that word again before verifying that he had, indeed, pronounced it correctly— _"…wow… yep, that's it…"_ —before continuing, "…the two of you will fight. For the good of any potential Reedollian-Human evolutionary path."

"Reedollian-human evolutionary… we're not even…! Look, I-I'm not fightin' Jim!"

"You're fighting Jim. He's challenged you to _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_." Bones answered casually.

"I'm not fightin' Jim—Jim, I'm not fightin' ye… ye, yer me friend, and… well, frankly, this is _not exactly a physically even match_. The odds are _a_ _ **wee bit stacked against me 'ere!**_ _"_

Jim was not hesitating in his approach, "Evolution does not create even matches, Mister Scott. This is survival of the fittest."

"What-wait— _n_ _ **o**_ _—!_ "

"I was just about to suggest we give you CQC gear, but Jim made a very valid point. Evolution is not fair, nor does it forgive poor life choices. That said, let the match begin!" Bones said blowing a whistle from his pocket.

Jim gave a fierce and furious scream, rushing after Scotty, who also screamed as he turned to run. Scotty was tackled from behind with enough force to turn his terrified scream into a near-falsetto screech. His face hit the mat hard enough to knock stars from behind his eyes. In a heartbeat, they were a struggling, punching, swinging, kicking mess.

"JIM, WAIT, I'M NOT READY!" Scotty's cry came, muffled into the sparring mat's surface.

"EVOLUTION DOES NOT WAIT!" Jim roared back.

A flurry of kicks and punches followed—they tumbled and rolled, wrestling one another in and out of headlocks, armlocks, some odd entangle of legs and clumsy limbs, Jim was on top of Scotty—"STOP PLAYING AROUND AND FIGHT, SCOTTY!"—Scotty was on top of Jim—"I AIN'T PLAYIN' AROUN', CAP'AIN!"—Jim was on top of Jim, Scotty was on top of Scotty, at some point, he tasted blood in his mouth. Just as soon as he was back on his feet, Jim came up from behind, somewhere, _somehow_ and slammed Scotty back into the floor with all the force of a Klingon warlord.

Again, he was pulled into a flurry of fists and elbows and was sure one bare-knuckled punch to his jaw was going to knock him off the mortal coil entirely. Down on the ground, with Jim atop him, Scotty—at the most inopportune moment—could only think of Jaylah.

Scotty wasn't sure if he was seeing his life flash before his eyes— _this is it, this is how I die_ —or if he was simply remembering one particular naked tumble with Jaylah. She'd convinced him to wrestle with her—to really _fight her_ —and it did not go in his favor. She had wrapped her thighs around his neck and one shoulder, crushing him into blacked out submission (to be fair, he honestly hadn't expected her to choke him out completely—all things considered, she probably hadn't expected that, either.) A triangle leg lock was his undoing that night.

Recalling it, he noted—Jim was right where he'd been, albeit with more clothes. He caught Jim's arms to stifle that flurry of blows, and effectively trapped the Captain between his legs. With Jim in a triangular headlock, he screamed with all his aching muscles to squeeze the Captain's shoulder against his neck, and sure enough the Captain's face was fast going red and purple.

"I am **so** sorry, Cap'ain!" Scotty cried, "Jaylah taught me this!"

"What were you **doing with her!?** " Jim choked, voice strained as he struggled between Scotty's legs.

Scotty gave him a cheeky, bloodied grin, "Oh, ye _know_ what we were doin', Cap'ain."

Jim flailed even harder, enraged.

Unfortunately for Scotty, Jim managed to bring one knee up, _painfully_ into his hip. A low blow that filled his entire side with pain enough for his chokehold to loosen and for Jim to reverse them into a crawling mess that led to Scotty being grappled into a chokehold from behind. It wasn't long before he was slamming his palm on the mat for mercy.

"Sorry about the hip, Mister Scott. I know it hasn't been the same since you turned sixty." Jim growled.

Scotty flailed his elbows back for Jim with a wild string of _Gàidhlig_ curses, before choking out, "Joke aroun' like that an' I'll shag yer maw and make ye call me _da_ , ye daft li'tle shite!"

"What does that even _mean?!"_

He managed to land an elbow into Jim's face, somewhere between the nose and chin, and it was enough to stun the man off of him. Heck, it'd been a good few years since his last serious brawl and the fatigue was hitting him hard. Unless he could knock the Captain out soon, he was done for. Scotty fended off another barrage of assault, tackling Jim face down into the mat. Jim squirmed beneath him as Scotty wrestled on arm around into an awkward chokehold.

"Just… just tell me one thing, Jim," Scotty growled, "…just what the 'ell were ye plannin' on doin' after kicking me arse and tellin' Jaylah about it? Ye think she'd just throw 'erself into yer arms because yer suddenly the big fud on the playground? Ye ever stop an' think, _oh, it's gonna be a wee bit awkward when I tell her I punched out her boyfriend because of some ancient ritual from a planet she's never even been on!"_

"Never _what_!?" Jim choked.

"Thought ye knew _everythin'_ about 'er, Sir!"

Jim's response was a strangled murmur as Scotty tightened his hold, "Ritual or not, yer just makin' a bawbag of yerself! She… **_Jaylah_** **_chose_** who **_she_** wanted!"

A flat palm was slapping the mat as Jim signaled to tap out—Scotty didn't give up, not after Jim had all of ignored his pleas to be released.

"S… Sc-Scotty! R… release me…" Jim gurgled, "…'as… an order!"

"Ask evolution to release ye, Cap'ain Perfect Hair!"

"S-Scotty!" Jim went limp.

Scotty rolled off the Captain quickly, his entire body sore and littered with pulled and strained muscles. He'd be feeling this for at least a week, no matter what Bones loaded him up with. Speaking of which, the good doctor had appeared out of seemingly nowhere, blowing that whistle again.

"…well I'll be _goddamned!"_ Bones beamed, staring down at the two of them, tricorder scanning both.

"Is Jim alright?" Scotty panted.

"Of course he is, Rambo, calm down. Sulu's going to be so mad, he owes me at least a month's worth of drinks, _oh boy_." Bones was grinning a crescent smile as he eyed Scotty.

Perhaps in another life, Scotty might have been touched by this, "…ye… ye bet against Jim? Y-ye mean ye bet on me? That I'd win it?"

"Well yeah, getting bitten up by Jaylah every night for the last few weeks, bolstering your adrenaline and hormone levels, hell, your amino acid uptake and protein synthesis is being done wonders from that DNA mixing. Otherwise, Jim would've broken you in like a pastor's wife skipping Sunday service."

Only partly understanding that, Scotty simply mouthed in exhaustion, _"…what?"_

"I mean, it's no steroid or growth hormone enhancement happening here, but—I'm definitely seeing some of my hypotheses confirmed about human and Reedollian DNA mixing, even on just a viral level in your overall muscle stru—" Bones rambled until Scotty slapped away the tricorder, growling, _"Git that thing outta me face!"_

"Can I get some good scans of overall muscle mass improvement at least? I'm just incredibly impressed considering your sedentary and alcoholic lifestyle."

"Sedentary… Bones, Jim is **unconscious**!"

"He'll be alright."

24.

Scotty and Jim sat adjacent to one another in sickbay as Bones hovered over Scotty with that damned tricorder and while Nurse Chapel tended to a cut on Jim's lip. Scotty winced.

"Sorry 'bout all that."

Jim shrugged. "Part of the ritual."

"Well, I could'a taken me ring off, at least."

Jim began to nod but winced and got a scolding from Chapel as he moved his head when she insisted he keep still. Nonetheless, Jim answered with a half-smirk, "…it's alright. Girls are into scars."

Chapel rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Miss Chapel." Jim said.

"You have enough of that, Sir." Chapel quipped, before slipping away.

Jim stared downward, quieter than usual. It was an odd sight, being on the opposite side of that battle. Scotty was rarely the sort to get in a fight these days. Sure, there were plenty in his arrogant youth. But they were over physics theories with other nerds who'd snuck their way (just as he had) into pubs. He'd gotten in a fight with another lad over a girl once in his school years—he'd had his ass thoroughly handed to him and said girl never even glanced at him again.

He'd never imagined Jim, with all his ego and all his confidence, would be so sullen. Ego bruised.

Maybe he was misreading it all. Maybe the Captain was just tired—he sure as hell was.

"Just a row between mates. Aye?"

Jim nodded, "Just a row between mates."

It was always unsettling when Jim was silent or brooding—he was always bright, a fire in his own right. At that particular moment, however, it was like watching a bonfire melt away to a wavering candle light. Calm, quiet, still warm, but not warm enough to heat a beachside camp.

"She's never been to Reedol?" Jim finally asked.

Scotty shook his head, "Nae. She, uh… she was born on a ship. In space. Her family were… they were a lot like us. Explorers."

"Huh. She's told you all this?"

"Well, _aye_ , Sir."

"She doesn't talk about herself to anyone else. I guess it makes sense now, though. She's looked so happy lately. Couldn't figure out why."

Scotty was unsure of how to respond to that—he'd become so used to her smiles, her laughter, even her nostalgic reminiscing about life on the _Mal-komma._ He had forgotten how closed of she'd been in the beginning. It was odd to think there was a time he didn't know her as he did then—and even still, he knew, there was so much more to her that was buried away, even from him.

Jim laughed quietly and continued, "I just didn't think anything of it. She never shut up about you. On away missions. Sometimes just catching her around the ship. Always talked about _you_ and it went right over my head. She smiles a lot more now. Does that… that cute, toothy thing when she smiles. That _real_ smile… how long have you two…?"

Scotty took a breath, hesitant to confess—he'd certainly let the Captain ramble on about his love for Jaylah well after the start of the very relationship Jim had been pining after. He pieced his words together carefully before he spoke, "…a… a while."

"…Yorktown?"

"Nae, nae," Scotty shook his head, "…I wish. Was too scared. Intimidatin' lass, Jaylah."

"You're damn right about that." Jim said.

"It's been… a bit, now. Long enough ta make me feel like I've been a real arse to ye. Yannoe. Fer listenin' to ye pine over 'er and sayin' nothing. Bit of a dick move."

"Just a bit, Scott."

"Wee bit."

"I'm just glad she's happy. And you're happy. Keep each other happy, Scott."

"Of c'erse, Captain."

It was a good while before Scotty considered finding his way back to his quarters. He was bruised up and a bit swollen here and there, but it was hardly worse than the last pub brawl he'd weathered. Jim seemed to have taken the brunt of it, although Scotty's nose was still throbbing and occasionally leaking a bit of blood when he changed the tissues stuffed into his nostrils.

The soft, airy slide of the door lead the way into the dimmed lights of his quarters. Stepping into the kitchen area to replace the tissues, he noticed a pair of untouched shot glasses on the counter he did not remember leaving out. He glanced around, not seeing anyone in his bed or nearby. It wasn't until he eyed the sofa that he saw Jaylah, asleep, still wearing her red uniform. It wasn't the first time he'd come in to Jaylah waiting for him—but it was the first time he'd come across her asleep like this. It brought a dopey smile to his face as he leaned over the sofa's back and watched her for a moment.

Scotty let his fingers reach down and trace a feather-soft touch across her shoulder, down her bicep where he'd memorized the black markings beneath the red fabric. She stirred slightly, a soft purr of her voice coming from deep in her throat. Before he could whisper a soft greeting, one pale hand bolted up and gripped his wrist, painfully tight, snapping him right out of his romantic reverie. He was all of brought to his knees as she turned his arm with cruel strength and fury.

"J-Jaylah! Jaylah, it's me, it's me!" Scotty breathed.

She released him quickly with a pained sound, "Scotty! Do… do not sneak up on me like that!"

Scotty groaned into the surface of the sofa, "Aye… aye, noted!"

" _T'kalna…_ I am sorry. Are you hurt?"

"Nae, I'm fine… I understand, it's fine. Just a reflex."

At least, he imagined he understood. It must have been a reflex from Altamid. She was probably a light sleeper because of it. Heck, he'd thought more about what scars Altamid had left her with than he ever honestly had before the events of that day. Pieces of the puzzle in his mind were forming a picture—and he'd smeared blood from his nose on the back of the sofa. Groaning, he rubbed at it.

"What happened, who did this to you?!" Jaylah said, looking closer, reaching out protectively.

"Wh… well," Scotty murmured as Jaylah looked over his face, taking his chin in her fingers with a less-than-gentle hold—this was her bedside manner, he knew from experience and comparison—and cautiously he answered, "…I got in a bit of a scuffle with Jim."

"With Jim?"

Scotty nodded, still awkward in her hold, "…Aye."

This was her "gentle." This was her concern. This was Jaylah looking over the bruises on his face and the swelling under one eye with a pained look on her face, protective and caring.

"I should have been there with you." Jaylah was a bit heavy-handed, but by this point, he was certain she was unintentionally teasing that masochist in him again. On his knees, aching, trapped in her fingers, just her concerned manhandling was enough to stir an unexpected sort of _want_ in him.

"Nae, it's alright. It… it was just a little tiff, nothing important. Just, ah… havin' some fun."

A light seemed to go off behind Jaylah's eyes when he explained it like this—as a bit of fun—and her expression warmed as she grinned and said, "Fun… I understand this! You made your ancestors proud, then?"

"Aye…" Scotty brought a hand up to Jaylah's, a smirk playing on his sore face.

"I am glad you are both well. I do not want either of you to be hurt. He is our dear friend. You are my…" Jaylah trailed off, biting her lip as she mulled over possible words. Scotty waited, and as she met his eyes, she confessed, "…what is really the word?"

"Girlfriends?"

Jaylah's laugh came with a soft snort and she shook her head, "No…"

"Boyfriend. Sweetheart. Fanboy. Lover. Partner in crime."

"I like that last one." Jaylah said.

"Aye, partner in crime."

A part of him wondered if he should have brought it up—the real reason for Jim's meeting with him. Would it have mattered anyway? It was hard to think too much of the outside world and its rules and its regulations when she was in his arms, tracing feather-soft kisses on his bruises. What would there have been to say, anyway?

 _Oh, by the way, Jim challenged me to Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na and I'm not sure if either of us were even doing it right, we probably weren't, but that's a thing that happened. How was your day, darling?_

Scotty grimaced at the pulsing ache in his nose and the stained tissues in his nostrils, "God, I need to clean up… Make yerself at home, Lassie. I'm steppin' into the shower. Or, ye know… ye can go back ta sleep, don't be shy now."

A thought crossed his mind, somewhere between a warm kiss on the sofa and the cold, sterile lights outside of the shower. A thought that, perhaps, Jim had some method to his madness. A point to be made. While Jim knew nothing of Jaylah, it seemed he knew everything of her background. But nothing about _her_.

In reverse, it seemed, Scotty knew more of _her_ than anyone else on the ship—barring, perhaps Bones on the basis of psychiatric treatment necessitating it. And yet, she was, to him, a flickering light against a backdrop of black, infinite space. Only Jaylah.

He realized, then, that there was more to this constellation than a single star.

Warm water eased the tension in his muscles as he let his head hang sleepily under the stream. Perhaps he'd won the fight, but _heck_ , it had been exhausting. He'd fought so much as a kid, always at odds with others. Somewhere along the line, that fire inside had burned out.

Or rather, he thought, it had been blown out.

Maybe Glynnis had blown it out when she left and never returned. Maybe Emma had snuffed out the dying embers when she left him waiting at the altar. Life had become so damned cold without that fire. Colder than Delta Vega.

And yet, there he was—no longer cold. Warm. Feverish, even, at times. A fire relit. He wasn't sure if the person he saw in the mirror these days intimidated him or not. It was a familiar face, though—his own, without the frozen pallor of that _loneliness_ he'd drunk away every night, on the rocks, as it were. Flings with fleeting women, in hindsight, seemed like a desperate grab for warmth, for the subtle body heat of another human being. He'd palmed through the dark so blindly for years. Clinging to any dying ember that could keep him warm. Feeling frozen death all over again when that light was gone in the mornings, never to return. Each light as ephemeral as the last.

He patted the bottom of an empty shampoo bottle, grumbling quietly under his breath, trying to reach whatever remained in the bottle to no avail. Scotty shook the thing once more, wondering when he'd ran out so quickly. With a sigh and a shrug, he tossed it out over the glass bordering the shower and into the bin nearby. He turned to reach for the backup bottle, before being nearly startled out of his skin by the slender figure behind him.

Jaylah did not react as dramatically as he often did when startled—where Scotty half-screamed and nearly fell on his ass in the small shower stall, Jaylah only straightened up and widened her eyes in mild surprise. She sucked in a breath, stilled, before looking up at him with question. Scotty exhaled and leaned back against the wall, silently wondering how many years she'd just scared off of his life. A weak laugh finally followed—at least it was Jaylah.

She stared at him and then said, as straightforward as ever, "…you said not to be shy."

Still coming down from a terrified cloud, Scotty only put a hand on her shoulder and laughed quietly into her neck, "Oh, thank god it's just you, Lassie."

"Yes, it is me? Who else would it be?" Jaylah said with mild amusement.

Letting his arms slip around her small waist and pulling her body against his own, he felt all the aches in every muscle seem to fade away. Between his words, he traced kisses on her neck and sighed, "…Jim comin' back fer round two. Wouldn't put it past 'em."

When Jaylah giggled, it was a surprisingly _girlish_ sound. In comparison to her often harsh tones and stern words, at least. She hated being called _cute_ , but in his mind, when she made that little noise, she was nothing _but_ cute.

Dim lights, refracted on droplets of water and a haze of steam eclipsed her smiling face in a sort of ethereal aura. Looking up at him through those long, black lashes, he saw that light, that fire behind the swirling gold of her irises. No ember before could ever compare.

 _Don't ever let this dream end._

"Yannoe, I… ah… Jim got a bit weird back there," Scotty confessed, "…wanted to challenge me ta some, some kind of Seyarr… Sarr-kelm Da…"

Jaylah's eyes widened and she hid her laughter against his chest.

Scotty sighed and added, "Just… alright, I'm-I'm _really_ _tryin'_ ta say it here."

She shook her head and _somehow_ , between breaths, Jaylah managed to get out, "… _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_ … oh, oh no… oh wow… oh no, Jim challenged you after he saw us, I… oh… we, we have not… we do not… _oh, no_ …"

"What?"

She was wiping tears from her eyes as she spoke, still struggling to keep her calm, "…I do not know what Starfleet is telling you about us… but Reedollians have not… have not had a _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na kalgassi_ in over six hundred years… not since long before the _Sokovi-na Miri_. Oh, _karna_."

"Oh. Alright, then. That, that's good, then, so I won't have ta do that again, will I?"

Jaylah's soft palm was a welcome feeling against his jaw as she stroked his face with more tenderness than he was familiar with from the warrior girl. Lashes lowered, smile gentle, her voice was sobered and delicate as she spoke, "No, you will not have to do that again. But… all the same. Thank you. For fighting for me."

Curiosity was eating at him—and for a moment, he realized, the questions sitting at the tip of his tongue had always been belted back by a sort of shyness. An uncertainty. Keenser did not speak of his home world or the Roylan species, ever—and personal questions, he'd learned early into their stay on Delta Vega, were a cultural faux pas. Reflexively, perhaps, he found himself seeking answers to his questions only this long into knowing Jaylah. But she answered easily, pleasantly.

"What… what exactly was that, anyway? The … _Sarr-kelm Da'sheerna_?"

From under a wash of water and soap bubbles, Jaylah answered, "… _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_ , it is… what is the word, a _kalgassi,_ a fight tradition among the races of Reedol. Some people did it, others hated it. I came from a people who practiced it longer than any others. _Lah-sheer_ are my people. We were a part of the _Sokovi-na Akhmetsi_ first, and yet, we seem to keep the oldest and most useless traditions… it is a strange thing. I do not always understand it. But my ancestors deemed it so. And so my parents' parents and my parents, they keep _Tha'kahli_. Very traditional, you may say. A _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_ _kalgassi_ was when the daughters of, uh… powerful families, were sought by many men. Or others. Not just daughter. Son, when there were sons or daughters of other families fighting for them. Or _tarketsi_ , who had many suitors."

 _"Tarketsi?"_

Toweling at her hair, Jaylah nodded, answering, " _Tarketsi_ … it is, ah, not male, not female. My mother's sibling was _tarketsi_. It is rare. Even rarer for one to be born _tarketsi_ and the other not. Good luck in the life of _tarketsi_. _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_ happened when many fought to be the mate of one. The strongest who lived bonded with the one they fought for. It was a thing of many stories. Many songs. They call it romantic, even still, when no more practice this. We call it barbaric now… but we still sing songs of the lover who fought the _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_ for their _Sier-kommatsi_."

"And… what is a _Sier-kommatsi_?"

They were lying on his bed when he asked this, over cool sheets and fitted perfectly in one another's hold. Jaylah's head against his shoulder, his neck, as her fingertips traced lines across his chest, past freckles and bruises. Jaylah took a moment before she answered with an airy, lightness to her words, " _Sier-kommatsi_ , it is like… it is you. You to me. You are my _Sier-kommatsi_."

"Aye… that makes sense," Scotty answered, "…so ye'd have fought for me, right?"

Jaylah nodded, amused, "Of course, I would."

She _would_ , though. He could see it, somewhere, in some different universe that surely existed by some stretch of chance and imagination. Strange, how in his mind, in any scenario, he could only imagine her in different timelines or stretches of existence as a warrior. A warrior who would fight for what she wanted. A warrior who only had to look up at the stars and decide, "I want it," and with time, would _take it._

The small lights above his bed gave a glow that reminded him of that first moment with her in the lift—when she had drawn him into her kiss. When she had looked at him and decided, _"I want you,"_ and without hesitation, without struggle or resistance, took him.

They spent that evening doing more talking than sleeping. He hadn't realized how much he'd craved this until that moment. She fell asleep first, partway into a drowsy explanation of _Sokovi-na Akhmetsi_ , the Reedollian First Contact. She was out before he could learn who the Reedollians' first "kiss" with space had been by. For humans, it had been Vulcan and from there, the Federation had been born.

Reedol was notably from outside and beyond the Federation, and their First Contact from a very different lover. Jaylah had told him stories of a planet with a great many different people—just like Earth—that warred and fought for the supremacy of the strongest and the smartest. A bloody history. Just like Earth. The First Contact made the wars end, and the reach for space and knowledge begin.

At some point after her, he too, was claimed by sleep. A short dream about a playground in Aberdeen wove its way through his mind. He thought, maybe, he saw a face of a girl he'd fancied when he was nine. It was a blurred, fiery-haired silhouette against a monochrome sky, however. Her name was lost forever. He dreamt of Jim pushing him through damp, green grass—and he dreamt of his sister running after the bus for school, shouting, "Git back 'ere ye fookin' bawheed!" and he could hear himself calling after her, "Clara! Watch yer mouth!"

Clara's high-pitched screech came in return, "Shut up 'n run, ye bampot!"

He hadn't seen the sky from Aberdeen, from Linlithgow, from even Earth in general in years. Had that dream not dripped into his mind like watercolor on paper, he may have forgotten just how bright the silver sky could shine on rainless autumn days. Had that dream of Clara's voice not barreled through his mind's ear, he may have forgotten the way his little sister smacked him with her backpack when they missed their bus, calling him her favorite insult, "Bampot!"

His alarm sounded at the same time it always did—0500. Reflexively, he moved his arm to silence the clock, only to find it stiff and buried under Jaylah's weight. He shuffled it free, haphazardly fumbling in the dark for the device to end the 0500 chirping. When it finally ended, he realized, glancing back over his shoulder, that she was there.

She turned sleepily, glancing at him over her shoulder and at the clock. She said nothing, eyes barely half-open, before she buried herself back under the sheets and curled against his side with a contented sigh.


	5. 25 - 29

25.

Jaylah was, perhaps, all of the entire opposite of a morning person.

She dragged herself from the sheets and blankets and moved sluggishly, slowly, almost _drunkenly_ as she yawned and let her head bob in a sleepy lull. Scotty was already dressed and making his bed with some amusement over Jaylah's sleepiness. When he was stretching past her with the sheets to line the bed neatly and she quickly perked up and moved to help—her disoriented state becoming more amusing by the second.

Perhaps it may have been a bit mean, he mused, but… of all people he knew, Jaylah was the hardest to imagine in such a state. And there she was. Trying her best to keep up, in a half-asleep stupor. But, oh, did she _try._

"Not a mornin' person are ye, Lassie?"

She shook her head. Jaylah rubbed at her eyes again and began to speak—before interrupting with a yawn. Reflexively, he felt himself fighting off a yawn before he interrupted it with, "Don't—don't start that!"

Jaylah was murmuring something in her native tongue—he wasn't sure what that explanation was, but he had a feeling she didn't realize she was doing it. It was a pleasant sound. At some point, he imagined, he would understand it.

They left his quarters together for the first time—of course, it would be Spock and Uhura who saw them together. Uhura greeted them with bright smile and her usual pleasantry. Spock eyed them with his typically stoic interest.

Jaylah was coming to her senses by that point, speaking with Uhura— _"Garash-tsir, koritzi."_

 _"Garash, comme par ga-ift sta kadash na?"_ Uhura answered.

Jaylah shrugged, replying, _"Kadash mor taurla, koritzi. Hid kadash'ga se'it mer-fallren."_

Uhura gave Scotty an amused, but subtle smirk from over her shoulder, before answering Jaylah gently, " _Kadash'ga se'it mer-fallren, na? Coffee, sonna."_

Jaylah shook her head in her mild daze and answered airily, _"Korsaa-fallren, coffee ank'atskil. Eck sta taurla, lil.."_

"That… isn't Vulcan is it?" Scotty whispered to Spock as the women linked arms and walked side-by-side, as if they did so every morning.

Heck, perhaps they did and he just hadn't been there to see.

He knew Jaylah was fond of Uhura, but he hadn't quite imagined them to be so close as to have their own coded conversations together. Then again, Uhura was a linguist…

Spock answered, as calm as ever, "It is a Reedollian dialect of the north-eastern hemisphere. I once gave Uhura the same inquiry whilst watching them walk together. Last week, they were speaking a different dialect. I believe they intentionally code-shift. For entertainment of some sort. They both appear to greatly enjoy dissection of language. It's rather fascinating."

In the days that followed, he listened to that language, more and more.

In the beginning, it had been a distinctly _coded_ sound to his ears. With repetition, however, it became distinctly _familiar_.

In the following days, he eventually asked her about these sounds, these _words_.

"Lassie, what's that thing you keep calling Uhura? _Koritzi?"_

She lit up the first time he asked her about her language, and she answered brightly, " _Koritzi!_ _Koritizi_ is like… girl, or sister… but it is not always used by blood siblings. It is a fond term."

"…Aye… I see. Ah… and, what's, um, what's _garash?"_ He said, repeating the phrase he'd heard her whisper to him in the mornings she'd awakened before he did—she would kiss him on the cheek and whisper that word, before disappearing into her day. He caught himself wondering more and more what each syllable, each particle meant.

" _Garash-tsir_ , it is, _sea brightening_ , but…" Jaylah glanced sideward as she tried to imagine an appropriate equivalent, "…I suppose the closest phrase is _good morning_. The sea shines when morning comes. At least, on Reedol. So we say, _sea brightening_."

"Aye… ye have a sun, right?"

Jaylah laughed, "Of course we do. We looked more to the sea than the sun, though. For a very long time."

In the days that followed, he asked her questions about more than just the _Mal-komma_ , but rather, about her people, about the planet and what led them to space.

She wanted to speak of it. It was like delving into a secret she'd been longing to share with _someone_.

Jaylah's eyes glittered whenever he asked.

After all, they never worked in silence—and she was being spirited away for away missions less and less these days. He allowed himself that one selfishness—that slight _joy_ to have her digging through cables and bulkhead next to him, or realigning coils and tending to warp core systems at his side. All of this was preferable to her beaming down to space stations and planets below.

He allowed himself that one selfishness, to remain beside her, hanging on her every word as she wove the history of her planet in so many conversations.

"The _Sokovi-na Akhmetsi_ finally came, I would say, roughly six-hundred years ago. They came for a short time, before they left again, but not without giving my people a direction. Up." Jaylah said, passing an interlock tool to Scotty before he'd even asked. She continued, "…in thirty-five years, we were crafting ships to their specifications. In sixty-nine years, we reached their outpost at the edge of our star system. In eighty years, we earned our place in the _Arivnet N'fai-Tuh_. It is like the Federation. The Akhmetsi founded it and they sought out other life throughout the universe. They did not have the Prime Directive. Instead, they sought to actively _intervene_. To give the gift of knowledge to all they encountered. I said nothing to contradict… but inside, I had a difficulty in the Academy, to understanding the Federation's Prime Directive. Everything I learn in the Academy, the _Avrinet N'fai-Tuh_ first taught me when I was a child, but differently. They taught me to share science and to _learn_ , from _everywhere_."

"Aye, I understand the idea that meddlin' in other planets' affairs may be a bit of playin' God, but… I have ta admit, I like the Akhmetsi idea of sharing knowledge." Scotty said.

He handed her an E-5 interlocker as she continued with a very casual shrug "…this is how I feel. My people once believed in gods. Many, many gods. We no longer believe in these gods, not like we believe in the memory of our ancestors. The Akhmetsi are not a people of gods. When they came to us. We were no longer people of gods. The Akhmetsi _God_ is science. They taught my people this—science to protect life. To take life from a rock in space that is meant to die, to another rock in space that is meant to live. The word we refer to them by, Akhmetsi, it is from _akhme—wise one, prophet—_ and _tsiritsi_ , it means…"

She thought about this for a moment, pausing. Somewhere between her thoughts, she had handed him back the interlocker and accepted a hyperspanner. Working at the panel opened up before the two of them, she gave a soft hum and said, "…I do not know the word. It is a light. A certain kind of brightening. The Akhmetsi came in a brightening that stayed in the sky. A great many lights still remain over the place the Akhmetsi came."

"Like an aurora?"

Her face lit up and she nodded, "An aurora—yes! I think, I have not actually seen, but… yes, it looks very much like an aurora. Very similar in magnetic nature. They brought light to my people. Our sky, it did not have lights like that before. Very calm atmospheric conditions. In pictures, it is a planet with much water… much ocean."

"Much water… like Earth?"

"Much, much more than Earth," Jaylah said, "…your people came from a small island you say?"

"Aye," Scotty answered, "…well, it's where _I_ came from. Some humans came from, well, much bigger islands. Continents."

"There are small islands on Reedol. But few live on them. Many live on ships. Great cities of ships. The Akhmetsi came to us, taught us how to fly, and we took our cities of ships to the stars. But before the Akhmetsi, we lived on the water."

"It's like ye come from a long line of, sailors, Lassie."

" _Aye,_ " Jaylah was saying this more and more these days, and he wasn't sure she even realized it.

"I come from it, just the same as ye," Scotty said, "…my family's always been on ships. Engineers. Shiphands. A couple Captains. Builders, planners, boatswains, machinists, a couple quartermasters… as far back as wooden ships on the ocean. Long line of sailors."

Jaylah was looking at him with that fanged grin of hers as she listened. He wound up rambling on and on about the Scott family's ties to the sea, and to the ships. When a greater ocean opened up to them—it was no surprise that they would follow the ships wherever they sailed. Even those who stayed on land seemed to wind up as scientists in their own right, either researching starship technology for the Federation or building the things from the vast, mid-American countryside.

Somehow, she wasn't bored by a word of it. Exchanging stories of their grandparents as far back as to their ancestors—as far back as they knew—from Alpha Shift to the end of Beta Shift. He counted sixty-seven new words he'd picked up from her through their talk, words in her language—not simple Reedollian, but specifically, the _La-Sheer'na_ dialect. His favorite word, however, was still _Sier-kommatsi_. They exchanged words with equivalents, between Gàidhlig and La-Sheer'na.

It was a handful of words, merely.

It was a start, though.

There was a sense of pride in Jaylah's voice when she spoke of her family's legacy in space. Six-hundred years, spanning over twenty-five generations saw her particular line traversing space. At first, in tiny vessels made of _takim-ga_ that burned up like meteorites upon re-entering the atmosphere. Then, in greater vessels, powered by the dilithium gifts brought to them with time from the Akhmetsi. It had been twelve generations since a member of Jaylah's patrilineal ancestors were born on their home planet and several generations since one had been born on _a_ _planet_ , versus a space station or ship. Her mother's line was lost in time, having been rendered a refugee after her people's war with another Reedollian nation.

Jaylah's mother and father had visited Reedol once, when she and her brother were in the womb—it was the only time either of them had been on their planet of origin—and for some reason, he was surprised to learn that the brother she'd told him of before had been her twin.

She had looked amused when she noted how strange it was humans were so _rarely_ born in pairs.

"How does your population grow, if only one child is born to a mated pair?"

"Well," Scotty shrugged, stifling his own amusement, "…some of us have _rather large_ families. They'll have one _bairn_ , then another. And another. And… ye'know. So forth. Sometimes multiples happen, but it's rarer. My brother Robert was born first, then myself, then my sister Clara. All a few years apart."

"I see, this makes sense. Reedollians only have children once in their life time." Jaylah explained, "Our families only ever go beyond four when we take others in."

He'd asked her once about the culture, about celebrations and festivities.

The question came around the time of Uhura's birthday. It must have been about May, at least, in Earth terms.

By this time, Jaylah was familiar with the fact that humans took every chance they got to celebrate, to throw parties, small or grand. Spock had the Ten Forward decorated in Uhura's favorite colors and the lounge was filled with, what he learned, were all of Uhura's favorite songs and favorite wines.

 _"There are not many calls for celebrations or festivities among Reedollian people. Births and deaths. Victories after battles,"_ Jaylah had explained. Her words were still heavy on his mind, as he opted to watch Uhura's party from his own perch near the bar, seated between Chekov and Sulu (both of which were arguing the origin of _karaoke_ around Scotty's head.)

Jaylah had slipped into the fray of dance and music with Uhura, with Jim, with Miranda and Welles. Jaylah was saying something that made Welles break into one of her typical giggling fits. Heck, even standing right next to her, he probably wouldn't have heard her over the loud pop music from Uhura's selection.

 _"…there were not many of us. Our nations were small, our people were few. We came from the water, and we rationed what little the water gave us. In times of war, city-ships would fight, and it was always for resources. For food, for filtration systems to cleanse the salt from the ocean and harvest water from the air. Fighting was to lay claim to the creatures, the jak'tukh—fish, you call them—that still lived under the water. Or to lay claim to the small islands that gave us maltika'tukh—vegetation."_

She danced under lights that moved around her in the way kaleidoscopes twisted and turned, as though worshipped by some kind of ethereal _something_ he'd never noticed before crossing paths with _Jaylah_. She moved, body curling so naturally to rhythm and music as if she herself were born of it.

 _"We did not have time or resources for parties, holidays, not even rituals or religion. Until the time of knowledge and of building, we all fought to survive on a planet with still, salty water and long, black nights. A birth would be celebrated with shouting and song, but for only a moment, and not again until death. Two new ones came, they would say, and then turn their eyes back to the lights of the jak'tukh under the water, chasing stars. Some would die, and they would shout and sing for the ancestors to return their lost loved ones to the sea—and the lights of the jak'tukh would eat the remains away."_

Light glistened in tiny beads of moisture on her skin. She was immersed in sound and celebration, dancing with Uhura, dancing with Jim, who caught Scotty scowling and quietly slipped away—respectfully—and an oblivious Jaylah moved on to dance with Keenser and Chapel.

 _"When we came to space, we had yet to think of celebrations. We were looking up, and we were still chasing lights that would keep us alive."_

Jaylah scarcely looked like a person who grew up without celebrations and parties. She liked loud music and she liked alcohol. She enjoyed the warmth of her _family_ around her, and she sang more than just classic rock songs on the karaoke with Uhura this time.

Eventually, somehow, she had made it back to him.

"I _like_ this party," Jaylah had said—having to shout over a loud, electronic melody Uhura was singing to—Scotty was more than a few drinks in and a wee bit past tipsy, fixated more on the slender fingers she traced over his knuckles as she spoke, "…I like birthdays. Parties. I could enjoy more parties. It is exciting!"

Uhura's favorite colors were gold and red. The lighting in the Ten Forward that night was a prismatic aurora of these two colors. Translucent red fractals shifted over Jaylah's skin and gold resonated with her eyes. She smiled, a being made of something somewhere between _fire_ and _electricity_.

Grinning, Scotty answered, "We could find a reason to party every night, yannoe. Personal party. Just you 'n me."

Her voice was a welcome warmth against his neck, and her lips were like a longed-for silk against his earlobe as she formed her words, "…you know I like a party louder than this."

"Rougher, too, Lassie," Scotty smirked.

Jaylah glanced over at an unopened bottle of wine with a large, white label and then back at Scotty. She was biting her lower lip again, in that little way that drove him mad.

"A bit tipsier, too."

"Aye, definitely that." Scotty said, tracing his fingertip across the wine bottle's label, lazily eying it's scarlet trim, "…yannoe, I don't think anyone will notice if this one 'ere goes missin'."

"I don't think anyone will notice if we go missing." Jaylah said, her fingertip lining a teasing path across his wrist in a way that gave him chills.

"Aye, let's just… go missin', then." Scotty breathed, lips just centimeters shy of her cheek.

"Aye," Jaylah agreed, letting their lips meet in a soft touch—the taste of white wine was sweet on her tongue and her sighs were subtle purrs he only heard through their proximity and his familiarity with the sounds she teased him with every night. Teasing brushes of lips paved way for his mouth kissing a playful path along the curve of her neck, if only to be buried in the scent of lavender perfume. Oh, lavender, her weapon of choice—it slayed him every time, with just as much precision as the last. Voicelessly, his lips formed words against her skin, _"…tha gaol agam ort."_

At some point, they had pried themselves from covert, teasing touches and increasingly heated kisses. Sulu had cleared his throat, loudly, from a forgotten place beside Jaylah. In all honesty, Scotty had forgotten the helmsman was still sitting there. Chekov stared straight ahead, drumming his fingertips on his glass, doing his best to pretend he wasn't sitting beside a heated pair of lovers.

"Oh, sorry, mates." Scotty murmured.

Chekov shook his head and just said calmly, "That, also, was inwented in Russia."

"France, my man." Sulu corrected.

"Russia."

"France."

Scotty ducked by the two—"Russia."—to swipe the near-forgotten wine bottle—"France."—and with one arm around Jaylah's waist (and her arm around his,) they made for the exit. At least, up until someone flicked the red and gold dance lighting to a temporary blacklight in time with the loud, bass-heavy music.

Anyone who looked toward the exit would definitely see a ghostly image of a bright, white wine bottle floating away next to a very bright, blue-white Jaylah, shining like the moon. They both froze and did their best to look like they weren't sneaking out.

Straight-faced, Jaylah cleared her throat and tried to look nonchalant. Scotty, at least, hid the wine bottle behind his back. Jaylah glanced in the direction of Chekov, who was all of gaping at her glowing form. Jaylah looked to Scotty, who was admittedly a bit wowed by the effect as well.

"I feel… very bright right now." Jaylah said against his ear.

"For what it's worth Lassie… ye do look pretty cool right now."

Luckily, the blacklight was only in until the song ended, and the lighting faded back to the atmospheric gold and red. They had been ready to take their leave, signaling one another with met eyes and a nod to the door. It was only one last interruption that stopped them—an announcement from the Captain, as he took the stage and the microphone.

"Everyone drunk yet? Well, don't forget, some of us are still technically on duty. So in that case, to those who can, a drink for our designated drivers." Jim beamed, amongst the crew's cheers and laughter, and he continued straightening his face some, "…of course, as we all know, there ain't no party like an Enterprise party. Especially when it comes to our friends. Our _family_. Coming together to celebrate the people we love and cherish. I could say we'd party from moonrise to sunrise, but… out here, it's kind of an all-night party that never stops. Now, the one keeping this party in _all, logical order_ , here, as we know, is our beloved First Officer Spock. In celebration of a happy thirtieth to the eternally-beautiful Lieutenant Nyota Uhura."

Scotty eased back, leaning lazily against the bar next to them. Jaylah was already a step ahead of him, but notably intrigued by the announcement. Visibly curious. Jim had a way of stopping the whole party to wish a crewmate a wonderful birthday—he always did, and Scotty had forgotten that this was only the second party Jaylah had attended.

Still, he too felt a bite of curiosity, rather than the usual boredom of listening to the Captain's theatric ramblings. Jim went on at least for several minutes, amorously, about when he first met Spock and Uhura years ago, and how he'd watched them grow together, how he'd grown alongside them. It wasn't his usual gag reel of embarrassing stories and playful jabs. There was something more, Scotty noticed, watching Jim go on, and extend a hand out to invite Spock and Uhura to the center of the Ten Forward.

Spock was as stoic as ever. If not, a bit lighter than usual. This was Spock's "happy" or "party" face, Scotty knew. It was difficult to discern at first, but almost three years with the Vulcan taught him more subtleties of face-reading than anything else in his life. Spock was glancing down at his feet frequently, and the mic was handed to him, as he spoke—wrestling with the subtlest smile.

Spock recounted the day he met Uhura, in a class he taught at the San Francisco Academy. She had spent a semester as a student to the Academy's youngest Professor. Then, she returned unexpectedly as an aide. She had posed questions to every hypothesis he put forward, and seemed to keep up with his subject if not only to challenge every posit.

"Miss Uhura had been, by far, the most fascinating mind I had encountered yet. To this day, and I suspect, until my dying day, I will regard her mind with the utmost fascination. The intensity of which, this admiration inside of me, I find is rivaled only by… the reverence I feel for her heart. The personality, the soul, the being that is made of this strength, this wisdom, this furious bravery, that I have come to know as the integral aspects of one, Nyota Uhura."

His hands, ever so normally folded behind his back, finally moved as Spock gracefully dropped to one knee. In his hands, Spock procured a small box, with a ring, as Uhura watched him in a glistening array of tears. The crew was cheering for them. Spock was silent as he gazed up at her. Uhura was already nodding, tears spilling down her cheeks, before Spock could even get the words out.

"Nyota Uhura… I would like to spend each and every one of my days with you. For what time permits us, and into whatever eternity may or may not exist. I would like to be at your side, to witness each moment of your passion, your wisdom, and offer to you all that I can in return for the enrichment you have brought to my life. I would like to accompany you, through all days forward, through all nights, through all of space, I would like to walk beside you as… as husband and wife. Will you marry me, Nyota?"

Scotty hadn't ever imagined the closed off, private Vulcan man—the man who hated being the center of attention more than anyone he knew—could have ever arranged such an extravagant proposal. But there it was—such a long time coming, at that. Uhura's arms were around Spock's shoulders as she knelt down before him, crying happily against his neck, kissing him and nodding, visibly saying, "Yes, yes, yes!" even though surely none could hear her over the crewmen cheering for them both.

Spock smiled.

26.

Between the crewmen congratulating the newly-engaged couple and Jim hoarding the mic for more stories to tell of the pair, Scotty had managed to brush some tears from his eyes before anyone, even Jaylah noticed. Happiness was contagious. He did, however, notice wet lines glistening on Jaylah's cheeks, as she watched them with tender eyes.

"Ye alright, Lassie?"

Happily, Jaylah answered, "…she is beautiful when she smiles like this. They are a beautiful match. I am happy for them."

He was hardly one to disappear without giving the pair his own congratulations, wishing them luck.

Jaylah followed, quickly stolen into an embrace by Uhura, who spoke into Jaylah's ear in a language only they knew. Jaylah giggled against her friend's shoulder.

"I'm stealing her for a dance before you two take off, Scotty!" Uhura announced, pulling Jaylah away again.

The girls danced together, laughed together, and he mulled over that _something_ Uhura had said to Jaylah. The words and the consonants were already a blur on his mind. But he recognized the sound of _Jaylah's_ language, now. At some point, one day, Scotty would remember that moment and know what Uhura said.

Jaylah traded places with Spock after two songs with Uhura. Spock had been in the midst of a loving series of shoulder-slaps from Jim, Sulu, Chekov, and Bones (in varying, repeating order,) when he was gratefully pulled back into Uhura's arms for a slow song. The engaged pair danced in their own little world, heads pressed together as they spoke soft, romantic _somethings_ in a language only _they_ knew.

Uhura waved to Jaylah, before letting her sneak away with Scotty, _"Til amatsil, koritzi!"_

Jaylah gave Uhura a mischievous look. Uhura's face was coy, knowing, teasing.

They eventually carved their way out of the Ten Forward, through the corridors, fingertips intertwined, and back to his bed and all it's warm familiarity. The impish little grin Jaylah had shot Uhura before lingered on his mind. He caught an echo of it in her kisses, riding a fragrance of white moscato. An expression, a face of contentment, that he could have only dreamt of a year ago.

Pieces of Jaylah's walls had broken down over time.

The pieces rolled down her porcelain curves the same way her dress slipped down her shoulders, dragged by his fingertips. Whispers of the Jaylah he knew now were a far cry from the lonesome, broken satellite which could barely ping home weak, coded chirps. He tugged at her dress as she slipped each button of his shirt free.

Tittering, her voice was fragile as she spoke against his collarbone, "…your shirts have the strangest patterns. What are these fish called?"

Scotty couldn't help but cackle quietly at her subtle appreciation of the tiny blue whale pattern on his white blouse—the one Keenser always called, "the most garish"—and said, "Whales, Lassie, thank ye verra much. And they're _awesome_."

Jaylah pursed her lips and tugged his shirt gently off his shoulders, "Strange."

The blissful little purrs escaping her throat with every touch were a song he'd come to memorize. Each caress worked to dismantle that unseen metal armor around her. A kiss on the cheek, entangled with a memory of that party he'd nearly stolen her from, an eternity ago on Yorktown. A kiss against long, black lashes tasted like salty tears—the same tears he'd seen trailing down her cheeks the night he carried her home. A kiss to catch the half-moan, half-sigh crossing her lips, forming _his_ name, _"Montgomery Scotty…_ " in a way that, said by anyone else, may have only humored him, but from her, _enraptured_ him.

Love bites were worshipful little bruises along her skin—she would always sting him harder than he could ever sting her, but her nails were gentle on his shoulders. Far moreso than their first, wild night—there was gentleness in her, a dark, feverish eclipse that stole him once in a blue moon. Feral wrestling was subdued when she was gentle like this, when her body was gentle above him, teasing out not lustful screams of her name, but instead, euphoric murmurs and sighs.

The armor was gone completely in those moments, her fingers intertwined with his, her back arching in a slow, pleasured curl. Her sword was all of thrown into the void on nights like this, when kisses weren't a war of dominance, but rather, a slow fall into some shared, carnal oblivion. A kiss along her soft, fair flesh was to the shy brush of elbows when they worked together, huddled under a shuttlecraft, trying not to stare at one another, trying not to let the other notice. A kiss along the round, soft of her breast was a kiss to the glimpses they stole of one another, always drinking in the sight like light on sun-starved eyes.

Sometimes, Jaylah was gentle, vulnerable, as vulnerable as he. Sometimes, sex wasn't just fucking. Sometimes, sex wasn't just clumsily tumbling after her in an exploration of some masochistic kinks he didn't even know he had until she'd ridden him into a begging mess, drunk on need. Sometimes it wasn't the aggressive sort of foreplay and games she pulled him into, or the naked "fights" where she'd always somehow manage to break him into submission—he would never question the extent of female flexibility again—and sometimes, it was simply Jaylah trying so desperately to allow herself to be small and _safe_ against his body like she was in _this_ moment.

Sometimes, it was just _this_.

Bliss, when release stole them both, some kind of ecstasy they were simultaneously drunk on. It fell less like a storm and more like gentle rain. Her lips whispered something foreign to him, he could barely feel it feathered against the bridge of his nose as he held her naked, trembling form on his lap. He was too high on a rapturous wave of to focus on those words, but they would come again, they always did.

In the "mornings" he was waking beside her more and more.

Sometimes, he managed a blessedly stolen moment—one in particular, seven minutes before his 0500 alarm went off. It'd been managed by mere chance—luck of waking up that seven minutes before 0500.

By this small chance, he was met with a slumbering Jaylah, peaceful, cherubic (or rather, _seraphic? —definitely seraphic,_ ) tangled in black sheets, partly around her long legs (one, at least—she kicked in her sleep,) and bunched just below her naked shoulder. Slender, alabaster arms were looped around his and her head was heavy against his shoulder. He must have spent four, five minutes simply memorizing each snowy strand of hair strewn messily over her face and pillow— _her_ pillow.

 _Her pillow_. The slightly softer one, the one she'd punched to her liking one night, as he watched in wine-buzzed amusement.

 _"Jaylah. Lassie. Jaylah, what… what are you doing to that poor pillow? What did it_ _ **do**_ _to ye?"_

 _"This is how you beat it in, Montgomery Scotty. Your pillows are_ _ **hard**_ _."_ She had said—just the memory of it made him grin, when he was trying so hard to savor the few minutes left before the alarm went off.

Yet, despite this, it was only chance to glimpse her before he awoke alone.

Many other times, he was met with an empty place next to him, a space shaped distinctly like the Jaylah it was lacking.

It still left him with an ache, each time she did it.

But he wasn't about to guilt her into staying. She came and went as she pleased.

Sometimes simply because she worked an earlier shift than him—he could remember a blur of her kisses against his earlobe and a whispered, " _Garash-tsir, Sier-kommatsi._ "—and sometimes, he thought he could remember her standing in the doorway, rubbing absentmindedly at one pale arm as she stared out the viewing panes and the ocean of distant stars they lived among.

Just the same, she was always there in Engineering.

Waiting for him with a smile, even on days he was met with a laundry list of system errors and frustrations that would have solidified his reputation as the ship's cantankerous old man. He hadn't heard that word used to describe him as often anymore.

He was more _pleasant_ these days, they said.

At least, Chekov had said so one shift, walking between he and Jaylah to the lifts.

"Sweet old man, now am I?"

"Yee. A beet like a happy old uncle these days." Chekov teased.

"Enough with that, before I become an arse again for the heck of it."

"He can be quite _rough_ when he means to be," Jaylah cast him a coquettish smirk.

"Aye, we run a _tight_ ship 'ere. Strict. Loud. Hot."

Jaylah elbowed a beet-red Chekov on his right, and she added, "Lots of screaming and shouting."

Scotty elbowed Chekov from the left, "Sometimes we've got ta really beat the kinks out of this ship. Could always use a helping hand."

"What is the saying? _The more the merrier?"_ Jaylah said, shoulder-shoving Chekov back to Scotty, who said "…Aye, that's the saying. We've always got room for one more in Engineering."

"O-oh my god," Chekov murmured, as Scotty shoulder-shoved him back to Jaylah, "I do not vant to picture zis!"

Before long, Jim was stepping out of the lift to catch Jaylah and Scotty passing a mildly horrified Chekov between one another like two schoolyard bullies picking on the smallest lad they could find.

The lovers only stopped the shoving when Chekov exclaimed, "Sir!" after which, they sobered up, as best they could against the urge to keep up the joke.

"Am I interrupting something?" Jim quirked a brow.

"S-Sir, I do not know v'ere zey learn such things, but it vas not Russia." Chekov hurried into the lift, his face redder than the surface of Mars, "… _it vas not Russia._ "

"…what, exactly, did I miss?" Jim said as the lift's door closed.

Jaylah shrugged and Scotty glanced sideward, as he answered, "Couldn't tell ya, Sir. The kid's prone to misunderstandings."

Jim passed them both, but not without eying them carefully, almost suspiciously, as he said, "Alright, Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, get back to work."

Jaylah went on only a small handful of away missions in that time. She was a part of Engineering more than ever. There was no question about it—and she seemed to prefer this. Her wonder for the machines and for the warp core systems hadn't diminished with time, not in the slightest. Her love for the ship only became clearer, stronger, through the hijinks Captain James T. Kirk guided the crew through and every repair that followed.

"Welles, you're going to be assisted by Ensign Carter this week, please walk him through the protocol in the case of anti-grav failure, as per yesterday's occurrence," Scotty instructed, scrolling down the notes on his PADD, "Jaylah, yer with me 'n Keenser, back on realigning the capacitors on the anti-matter injectors. Ye got the regulator maintenance covered, aye?"

"Aye," Jaylah nodded.

She found her way back to an assignment in the Jeffries Tubes again, some time later. He'd been hesitant to let her go, but she volunteered, and she _insisted_.

"I want to stop being afraid." Jaylah had said.

 _I want you to be unafraid, too, Lassie._

And so, Scotty trusted her with it.

She came back with only a mild sweat and not a tremble to be noticed. The task was completed quickly and effectively. He had staved off the urge to check on her throughout, via communicator. He ignored the sensation of _fear_ welling inside of him. If only because it came intermingled with a _want to fight_. He had faith in her, he reasoned.

Jaylah was fighting and she was winning.

At the end of the day, she was always fighting battles.

However, some battles she did not win.

27.

Nightmares weren't a thing that struck Scotty often. Hardly ever, in fact. He could say, perhaps, it had been a good while since he'd had a nightmare that rattled him into his waking life.

But in the recent nights, a recurring sort of dream had slipped into his mind. A dream of falling, at first. He'd rationalized it as a fragmented memory of the torpedo's descent to Altamid. He'd certainly had nightmares of that fall in the first days back on Yorktown—but they slipped away quickly.

However, the more the dream returned to him, the more details he caught. The more details he caught, the more he realized—this was not a torpedo, this was not an escape. This nightmare was one of an abduction.

He saw bees. Countless bees. Black and thick and jagged as they tore unnatural geometric patterns through Altamid's pale sky. He saw smoke and fire and he smelled something _burning_ that was distinctly metal, and burning _takim-ga_ alloy— _how could I possibly know this_ —and something else, acrid, bitter, like seared meat.

Glimpses of light through a crack in pitch-black darkness filtered through his mind.

Shadows passed by the light in silence.

The shuffle of footsteps and the sensation of boiling moisture biting at his flesh were all he could fixate on. At least, until that shadow crossed again, settling somewhere out of sight— _nearby, beside_ —and he heard a tear of something sickly-soft and wet.

A scream followed. Panic flooded him, manifested in the sensation of cords— _no, tendrils—_ wrapped around his legs and arms, sliding up across his body with slick fervor and a sour scent that made him want to gag. He thought he could hear himself scream—but he wasn't sure. He heard several voices screaming in _La-Sheer'na_ , and somehow, he felt as though he _knew_ these voices.

But he knew he did not.

All he knew was that they screamed. They always screamed.

They screamed for mercy—every time. _Holy hell, the tendrils, the boiling_ —and then, the screaming.

 _He's coming._

Tendrils tightening around his legs, his arms, squeezing the life out of his chest, cracking at his ribs—all while he felt the blood and bile rushing to his skull, to his mouth—he was upside down—the bloody _tendrils_ —

 _—Krall—_

Scotty awakened to _Jaylah's_ scream, nearly jumping out of his skin at the sound.

Half-asleep, half-panicked, he bolted upright, palms moving to his shoulders, to his throat, trying to tear off the tendrils squeezing the life out of him.

There was nothing there, though—it'd been a nightmare, he realized, in a terrified, half-asleep stupor.

No tendrils. No boiling, no bees, no buzzing in the distance—only Jaylah beside him, thrashing, screaming.

It took him a confused moment to realize the flailing woman beside him was still trapped in a nightmare's vicious maw. She was pawing at the blankets, the sheets, tangled like an insect in a web.

"Jaylah!" Scotty breathed, turning to his frantic lover.

Unfazed, her panic and kicking was only intensifying, _"Na'takh tagemshir na sonma maga, Gadda, maga, Kier! Gadda! Kier! Na'takh tagemshir na!"_

"Jaylah, love, wake up, I'm here, I'm here, love, wake up!"

She was screaming in her language, crying, _"Kier! Gadda!"_

He pulled her flailing body, all of her violent, deadly limbs against him. He took knuckles to the face that garnered a shocked yell and made him see stars. Scotty had wrestled and played rough with her so much, he'd forgotten how _damned hard_ she could really hit. Had she been meaning a blow, he may have wound up on the ground in a mewling heap.

It was as Bones once warned him, that he often forgot— _she is much stronger than she looks, not unlike a Vulcan._

Dizzy, but regathering his senses, he planted gentle kisses on her shoulder, "Jaylah, I'm here, it's okay, you're safe."

She was calming down, panting, opening her eyes and looking around in a mix of disbelief, confusion, _relief_.

"It's okay, Lassie, yer safe, yer safe, I'm here, yer safe, I swear, yer safe, I'm here."

Her chest rose and fell, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She was still crying, her body was still tensed, _cold_. Cold with sweat, cold with terror. She was still just long enough for him to stroke her hair, and whisper her name again before she touched his face. Tears still spilled.

"Scotty… I am so sorry, I…" His blood was on her fingertips. Until that moment, he hadn't realized the small stream trickling past pain-numbed lips and tickling down his chin.

Shaking violently, again, Jaylah moved to climb out of the bed, repeating over and over, desperate apologies.

"I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry—!"

"Jaylah, it's alright, ye didn't… it was an accident,"

"I need to leave."

"Jaylah, love, no. Please. Please stay."

"I need to leave!" Jaylah repeated—and for once, Scotty refused her.

He had forgotten what it felt like to feel so out of synch with her. To not expect each motion she made before she made it, to not have a feeling what she would say before she thought it. Was she just as thrown off the frequency as he? It was like someone had torn apart a metronome that ticked in the back his mind, one he'd forgotten was even ticking.

She pushed against him and he pulled her back. He all of slammed her back against the bed with more force than he'd intended.

"Jaylah, please! Calm down an' listen ta me! Y'er _safe_ , Jaylah. I won't let anythin' hurt ye!" He hadn't been sure what possessed him to pull her back like that, but he let his palms slip away from her shoulders and felt a sick sensation of guilt welling in him.

She swallowed hard, still crying, her sobs quiet as she turned her head. She covered her face with her hands and murmured, "I do not want to hurt you again… I do not want you to see me like this. This is shameful."

Everything about this hurt, terribly.

"This why ye kept leavin', then? Ye didn't want ta hurt me? Ye thought I wouldn't love ye if I saw ye cryin, Jaylah? It… It isn't _shameful_ , Jaylah."

Jaylah had turned onto her side, pulling her limbs closer to her form, looking smaller than he'd ever seen her. She said nothing. Still, though, she cried—choked, silent, _miserable_ sobs. Scotty gave a tired sigh, resting his forehead against her shoulder—knowing the action to be risking another swat, somewhere or other.

Finally, Jaylah spoke, voice quaking, "…I-I do not like this. This crying, letting you see this crying."

"It's okay…" Scotty whispered.

She cried for some time, before the trembling slowed.

Only then did he realize his hand had moved to cover the place she'd sunk her teeth into him months ago, now. Long since healed up, but still—every so often, he felt the subtle _sting_ of _something_ stemming from that spot. The subtlest friction of faint static, it felt like.

Everything was beginning to make a semblance of sense at this point—the numb feeling when she stared into nothing, silently quelling a ripple of nonsensical terror in the middle of the day. The panic in his sweaty palms when she climbed the ladder of the Jeffries Tubes. The nightmares of a place he'd never seen before—a place that, he realized, _she_ had seen before.

The emptiness of being disconnected, in that moment.

 _This_ was why she always ran.

She sat up, still silent, still beside him. They sat in silence at the edge of the bed for some time, his head pressed gently against hers. Somehow, his fingers had intertwined with hers and the warm touch of her skin was a reminder that she was still real—not a dream intermingled with nightmare, but simply, reality.

With a few long, slow breaths, Jaylah finally spoke, "I am sorry for all of this."

"…please don't be, Lassie."

"You are… having the nightmares now, too. Aren't you?" Jaylah ventured.

"…truth be told, I thought I was just imaginin' things. Panic when you went int'a the Jeffries Tubes. Dreams of places I'd never seen before." Scotty answered softly, "…is this…"

"My fault."

"Don't say it like that, Lassie."

"If I had kept a distance, you would be alright."

"If ye create a distance, I'll fall apart."

Jaylah lowered her head and fell silent again. Maybe that wasn't the best answer to give her, he thought in retrospect. Maybe he really was just losing his mind. Maybe nothing was making sense.

She turned to him, gentle fingertips tracing a path across his jawline, over his lips. He could still taste blood from the throbbing ache where she'd hit him.

"I am so sorry. You're bleeding."

"Aye… might 'ave dribbled blood everywhere, but… I think I'll live. I'm sorry I pulled ye back like that. Made a bit of an arse of me'self. I'm not really sure what to do. Just know I dinnae want ye do this alone. Maybe I'm a selfish arse and dinnae want ta be alone again. One or the other. Both, maybe." He looked up at her, "…ye feelin' any better?"

Jaylah nodded but winced as she moved closer, eying his nose.

They found their way to the first aid kit, tucked in a cabinet by the shower.

She cleaned the blood from his face his protests and assurances, "Th-thanks, I'm alright, I've got it, really."

"I let you help me. Now let me help you." Jaylah said, her tone nearly mirroring the one he'd heard when he'd first met her on Altamid. He winced when the rubbing alcohol found a cut just under his nose. Perhaps from a nail's sharp edge.

"A bit harder and ye might 'ave knocked a hole straight through me head." Scotty joked. Jaylah's expression was still too heavy to find any amusement in it. In silence, he caught himself absently pressing his tongue against a tooth that he was quite sure was in a different spot before.

"Do you want to have Bones look at it?"

Scotty shrugged, "Ye know, if I did that, he'd stick me with at least three hypos I probably don't really need."

"I am sorry, Montgomery Scotty. You are the last person I ever want to hurt."

"Well, Lassie, to be fair, ye get me begging for this sort of thing every Tuesday night, so…"

Jaylah rolled her eyes and said, "That is… that is a very different kind of fighting."

He thought to comment on _sexy fighting_ , but thought better of it, opting for silence instead.

"Is… is it always like that?" He finally ventured, "…the nightmares?"

Jaylah's motions slowed slightly, before she answered in a soft, hoarse voice, "…it's gotten better."

"Better… well that's good, then. Progress. I mean, heck, maybe it might not always be so rough."

At least the weak smile at the corner of her mouth was reassuring. Despite a brave face they both put on in the face of this _something_ , he himself knew he had a tendency to run when faced with a certain sort of problem he could never solve. His brother had suffered cyclic bouts of severe melancholy since he was a teenager. Robert pulled away from the family at eighteen, and Scotty saw him very little after the fact. The last time he'd seen the man, Robert had confessed he was passing through Aberdeen on only two hours of sleep in the three days. Robert, grinning like a madman, had said in the most upbeat voice he'd ever heard, _"I'm miserable, Monty."_

Scotty had always regretted the way he pulled away from Robert, back then. Never sure of what to say. An equation he couldn't find the solution for, a machine he hadn't the tools to fix. The best he could do was offer more beer. The drink always helped him, he figured.

This time, he couldn't pull away. Not even if he wanted to. Fear wasn't there, as it had been before. Simple frustration at not knowing how to _fix a damned thing about it_ was what lingered.

Still. He noted that Jaylah drank less these days. He couldn't help but wonder what sort of misery she drank away when they were on Yorktown. If _this_ was "better," he couldn't help but feel a sting of pain at imagining what life must have been like before.

"I feel like I am broken, still. I will always be broken." Jaylah's voice was low, soft. Fragile.

 _Fragile, but far from broken._

"Can ye still fly?"

"What?"

"I mean… the Franklin was broken. _Verra_ broken. But we made her fly. She flew and she saved us all. So… can ye still fly?"

Jaylah's lip quaked for a moment, before she bit down and fought back more tears. She nodded and he reached for her. She slipped slowly, gently into his arms, and she choked back quiet sobs against his chest, "…I can still fly."

That distant beat of _something,_ that _pulse_ , it was ticking back into his mind again, until it became background static. A metronome, uninterrupted. That lonesome feeling of haven fallen off the cloud he shared with Jaylah faded away, and the warmth was there on his chest, all of hot tears and dried blood.

28.

After that night, Jaylah slipped away, back to her quarters in the evenings. He'd tried to protest it, but she made a very valid point when she replied, "A series of exams are coming. I need to take all the time I can to study."

Right—she was still a cadet.

She disappeared down a corridor he sensed was almost _foreign_ to her at this point, and Scotty wondered how many weeks had passed since she took that course to her shared quarters with her assigned ensign crewmate. It had become so easy to forget what going to sleep alone felt like, and much easier yet, to forget what waking up alone felt like.

The distance was coming, whether she intended it or not.

Two nights, three nights, several nights came and went, alone. She seemed fine enough in Engineering, carving her way through every task as usual. Initially, he'd opted not to take advantage of his ability to assign her tasks closest to him—and when he finally gave in to the temptation, she somehow managed to be elsewhere. Reasoning enough not to fight it. Lest he make it painfully obvious he was manipulating the rules to keep her close.

For a moment, he thought he remembered his sister's words in his mind, _"Don't get weird about it, Monty."_

Don't get weird about it.

The Enterprise eventually made a scheduled resupply stop on the Starbase Icarus. A short respite from the familiar walls and corridors of the ship that had become their home in space. Similar to the Yorktown, the Icarus was a place of glass panes and vast views into the ocean of space.

Jaylah had slipped away under the radar, again—opting to steal away with Uhura and Spock. He tried to keep a straight face through it all. He tried to remind himself of Clara's words, to remind himself of the mantra, _don't get weird about it._

The stay on Icarus was short. Three solar-days tops.

Jaylah was nowhere to be seen throughout the entirety of that time.

He glimpsed her once, several glassy corridors away, walking with Uhura and Chapel. The sight of her was enough to stop him dead in his tracks. He considered calling her over the communicator later that evening, but opted against it. She was smiling, at least. Looking up at Uhura with glistening gold eyes.

For a moment, he thought she was laughing about something. But she hesitated, for the briefest fraction of a second. Staring forward, as though catching sight of something familiar, far ahead of her. Chapel looked to be asking her something—Jaylah shook her head and brushed off the inquiry.

Scotty felt a similar cold down the corridor in which he stood. He had a feeling he knew exactly what she saw, if only for a moment. Somewhere amidst the people walking, far ahead, he too, could look up and see a figure watching him. He'd only seen that figure once, over a year ago now—but every detail was vivid and burned into the recesses of his mind by the fires of adrenaline and terror in which this figure first came.

 _Manus._

 _You can't possibly be there._

Jaylah was still haunted by the ghosts of these memories.

Scotty's knuckles had gone white as he gripped the corridor's decorative railings—he was trapped by this specter at the end of the hall. He, too, was haunted now, by Krall and his underlings.

 _It's not real. It's not real._

It wasn't just nightmares anymore.

29.

"If you want someone who knows Jaylah better than anyone else, Mister Scott, I recommend Miss Uhura." Bones said, jotting down notes on his PADD with a stylus that didn't seem to want to cooperate. Bones looked at the thing and shook it, before grumbling, "…damn thing… can't keep this piece of junk charged. You got another stylus on you?"

Scotty shook his head, following behind Bones as the man lead the way through his office. Bones crossed around a desk—a specimen of a tribble was still inside of a glass compartment at his desk's edge. Bones was sifting through his workspace for a backup stylus, or, perhaps, even the small charging deck for the PADD and stylus. All of this, to no avail.

"Now, if you want me to take a look at that hefty bruise of yours, I can do that. If you want me to verify that, yes, your top-right incisor _is_ distinctly more crooked than the last time I saw your crooked grill, then _yes, I can do that_. _But_ , it goes against patient confidentiality and my personal honor to break said rules, _laws_ , to divulge you in sensitive psychological data about your decidedly erratic girlfriend without her consent. If you've got questions, Mister Scott, the best I can suggest is to talk to _her_ about it. Goddamn this… stinkin' PADD, not even a damned backup stylus…!"

Scotty may have reacted a bit more on any other day.

But that day saw him particularly indifferent to all of Bones's sarcasms or even Keenser's climbing around on everything _not_ meant for climbing upon.

"Look, I'm not… I'm not askin' ye to break confidentiality laws, here."

"What do you want, then?" Bones said, visibly fighting off the urge to scoff, "What is it you're asking me for? A damned roundabout way out of a mess you got yourself into? You've found trouble in paradise and now you want to run? Don't involve me in that."

"Don't give me that bullshit, McCoy, I'm scarcely in the mood f'er it."

Bones finally took a seat opposite Scotty, and eyed him carefully for a long, silent beat.

Finally, the Doctor took a deep breath and folded his hands together, leaning forward slowly, "I'll make you a deal. You answer me honestly and I'll answer you honestly. The best I professionally can. You want to talk about Jaylah off the record, then I'll talk with you about Jaylah, _off the record_. But don't expect me to pat you on the shoulder for tapping it twice and bowing out. She's not Mira. She's not Carolyn. I give a damn about Jaylah, like a sister, I'd say."

"Aye, I get that. I do. If someone treated Clara wrong, I'd break their bloody neck. But this isn't want ye think it is."

" _What_ is it, then?"

"I dinnae… I… I'm not sure if I'm losin' me mind or if there's really somethin' happenin' that I didn't think was possible. But, well. Call it crazy, but we're having the same nightmares. Or, rather… I think I'm havin' _her_ nightmares. If that makes any sense."

"It makes zero sense."

"Aye. Alright, then."

"Go on, though."

"Started before we stopped on the Icarus. I don't think it was the first time this has 'appened, either. I woke up before her from this… awful, vivid nightmare. Panicked, freaked out a wee bit. I look over next ta me and she's panicking just the same. I try to wake 'er. She doesn't wake, she just keeps screaming and crying in this nightmare. I _know_ it's Altamid. I _know_ … I just _know_ it's Krall, or Manus. And… I reach for her, and she flings her fist out and, she—she didn't _mean_ it. Jaylah nearly knocked me teeth in. But it was an accident and a nightmare. An' I think… I _think_ maybe she _isn't_ sufferin' it alone, now. Maybe I really am there with her. But I dinnae what ta do."

Bones narrowed his eyes, looking him in the eye, then eying the bruise at the edge of his mouth and just below his nose. It took a moment before the man finally reacted with a drawn out sigh.

"You're telling me, you think you had the same nightmare as someone next to you? At the same time? Like a sort of psychic link?"

"Look, I know—I am _aware_ it sounds insane."

"No. No. I'm not going to say that," Bones shook his head, tapping his dead stylus against the desk's surface, "…I'll say it does sound unlikely as all heck, but. I've seen some things in space that make me rule out impossibilities on principle. If you're on to something that the Federation isn't aware of, medically, I'd say that's grounds enough for me to divulge certain aspects of… vague information concerning Jaylah. If only on the basis that this implies her problems are potentially becoming your problems. _But_ like I said. I can't just go telling you all her problems willy-nilly. You need to talk to _her_ about that. You said you don't think this is the first time you've had a shared experience of this sort?"

"Aye. When she went in the Jeffries Tube the first time—that day the Captain was on his wild _Sarr-kelm Da Shir'na_ trip."

"Tha. Tha Shir'na." Bones corrected.

"Da." Scotty attempted.

"Tha." Bones insisted.

"Da," Scotty tried again, failing, before moving on, "Look, the point is, nobody ever told me she was claustrophobic and…"

"She's not claustrophobic. She does fine in confined spaces."

 _Not claustrophobic?_

"…she went up there," Scotty continued, slowing at this new information, "…when she left, she said she was fine. But I had a feeling she wasn't. I imagine, maybe… twenty minutes or so in, _I_ felt claustrophobic. In the middle of the main Engineering deck. Ye… ye don't just feel claustrophobic in there, not unless y'er diggin' into the crevices and chasms Keenser's gotten himself inta. And even then, I just, I don't typically get claustrophobic. But _she was_. Damn near across the lower decks, she was up in that Jeffries Tube, and she was havin' a kind of anxiety attack. Down below, on the engineering floor, I was, too."

"Chances are, Scotty, you just had a bit of anxiety over her safety. Jeffries tubes stemming from the lower decks to the saucer are categorically _unsafe_ workspaces. You care about her. You might also need to cut back on your alcohol and sodium intake. Hypertension, and all."

Scotty half-groaned and palmed at his face, "McCoy. Doctor. Bones. Leonard. I'm not unfamiliar with anxiety attacks. However, I'm becomin' a _wee bit_ familiar here with feelin' things happenin' in my head that don't make mathematical _sense_. The nightmare in particular. The other night, that was, definitely not the first time I'd had it. But it was certainly the last time I could just write it off as a bad dream. Somethin' is happenin' and I think I'm a bit rightfully concerned 'ere… it's… it's definitely a nightmare that only works its way into my mind when she's right there next to me."

Bones leaned back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest. His gaze seemed to fix on the tribble at the desk's edge as he mulled over the information for a time. Finally, he answered, "…I can think of a possibility. One possibility. You might not like it. I don't like it—as a hypothesis. I don't like the questions it raises. But. I can only imagine between the DNA mixing and aspects of her species that are more, _neuro-electric_ than ours, it's… _possible_ there may be a chance for shared neurological disturbances. You've got to understand, man—you are only the second human being to engage in a relationship with a Reedollian. At least, known to the Federation."

"Aye, and what happened to the first couple?"

"Well, I took a look at the case file, just to be aware of any oddities that could spring up and potentially threaten this ship's favorite Chief Engineer. Luckily, I saw nothing of this nature. Nothing of any negative nature, really. That pair was a human woman and a Reedollian male. She—Miss Nadia Singh—of course, didn't follow through with vaccinations to keep up her DNA integrity and in about a year's time, she was… definitely a kind of human-Reedollian hybrid. She never reported any other unusual effects of their relationship. Nothing even of the sort that resembled any sort of… neurological interfacing with one another."

"Oh. Alright, then." Scotty feigned a weak smile, "…so, likely, I'm just losin' me mind."

"Possible."

"Aye, that makes sense. Thanks for that."

"No problem," Bones nodded, before going on, " _However_ , Miss Singh's husband, Yasmir, divulged the Federation's database in just about all the knowledge we have on the Reedollian species. _One_ point of which, I'd like to mention, _does_ involve a transmission of information without verbal communication. The way Yasmir had described it was, in my opinion, nonsensical—at least up until now. He'd mentioned static upon touch, and that the static 'carried many words' he said. Up until now, I'd written off his quote as a clumsy translation of the language, or perhaps even a sort of culture-originated metaphor… but now, I'm not so sure. Unfortunately, that's about as much as we know. Reedollians and most species of the _Avrinet_ are mostly blank pages in the Federation's database of our fellow inhabitants of the universe. I can only tell you what we know from Yasmir and from what Jaylah's consented to contribute to our science and anthropology department. Then there's a fuck-billion variables involved when you talk about the gene splicing and mingling that goes on when they intermix with other species."

"What did ye mean by her species being more _neuro-electric_ than ours?"

"Well, like I said. Yasmir mentioned static carrying information. Jaylah mentioned something similar to me once."

"She did?"

Bones all of stopped mid-sentence and Scotty was certain he saw a smile inching its way onto the doctor's weathered features. Bones straightened his lips and then nodded, "…she did say something like that."

"What did she say?"

"Right. Off the record. She mentioned the static electricity. How it was good luck in her culture. To feel a 'static bite' between two people. I'm not going to get into it. But she mentioned _you_ , back on Yorktown. She was a bit out of sorts over it. Can't say I blamed her. Don't dare mention I said a _thing_ about it, though. I didn't see why it was so important back then. She explained it to me like… most living things on her planet are capable of bioelectrogenesis, which is consistent with being a species evolved from a mostly-aquatic planet with very little light. It's not just an aspect of survival and hunting, but communication. I can buy the idea of two Reedollians sharing information to some degree using electrical signals humans are incapable of producing."

"But… a human and a Reedollian?"

Bones answered slowly, carefully, "…well, truth be told, there's a lot we just don't know."

"…ye said she wasn't claustrophobic. Ye know it from what she's told ya?"

"I can say, from what we both know of her, Jaylah is _not_ claustrophobic. She… didn't have a claustrophobia-induced episode in the Jeffries Tube," Bones finally confessed, before saying, "It's the, uh… it's the tendrils. Some kind of _thing_ Krall used to hold his prisoners captive until he and his men got around to cannibalizing them with that _energy transference_ thing. Jaylah was in line for that fate. Up until she wasn't."

The tendrils. Scotty recalled them vividly from his nightmare.

"…how long was she in there?" Scotty finally asked.

More silence. Maybe it was the wrong question. Maybe Bones preferred to just drum his fingertips over the desk's surface as he mulled over the legality of dispensing such a specific answer. Maybe he just found it just as horrid to imagine as Scotty did, upon finally responding.

"About six weeks, before Krall made his way to her and her family. The crew and civilians of the _Mal-komma_ were quite numerous. Initially."

The sliver of light and the shadows moving beyond still lingered in the back of Scotty's mind. The boiling heat and the pressure, the damn-near _strangulation_ of whatever alien holding device Krall subjected his prey to, it had a way of sending a chill down his spine.

"It still haunts her." Scotty's voice was low, sobered.

"PTSD has a way of doing that. But… for what it's worth, I have to commend her. Jaylah is… one hell of a fighter. For everything she lived through. All those years. All the things she had to do to survive. She's incredibly receptive to coping mechanisms, psychological support, anything we offer her to try and help her battle it, she accepts. The girl lives to fight. She won't go down without a fight."

Something about that carved something out of him from within. The knowledge that in spite of every weapon the Federation's medics had given her, she still suffered. Alone. She was still facing this intangible behemoth, fighting with only sticks and stones.

He'd seen just a glimpse—he'd felt only a brush of the isolation weathering her numb, lost hope. He thought, at one point in his life, that he knew isolation. Heck, he had no idea in comparison.

"Bones …just tell me what I can do to help her. I can't… I won't let her fight alone."

"Well, I would hope not. Given the implication that her war has, quite literally become your shared war. Even after all this, you have no want to run?"

Scotty grimaced, "Never."

"If you really want to help her," Bones sighed, "…just simply be there. Be there when she's fine. Be there when she isn't. Be there when she's trapped in a nightmare, give her space if you have to. Be aware that she could wake up swinging. Be there when she's smiling and fine one moment, and then numb and stoic the next. Know it passes. Know it comes back, with little to no warning. Know that one day, she may wake up from a nightmare and it may very well be the last nightmare she'll ever have of Altamid. Know that, possibly, that last nightmare may never come. If what you're saying about this neural link is a real anomaly binding the two of you, be aware that this implies her trauma could potentially become _your_ trauma by proxy. We're talking a potential risk factor here, for your own health and safety."

"I don't give a damn about that, Bones, I told you, I'm not lettin' her fight alone."

Bones shook his head, his lips forming a straight line, before he answered simply, "…love really does make us nuts, doesn't it?"

* * *

 **Notes:**

Not gonna lie, I live for Uhura/Jaylah friendship and I really hope that gets touched on in the next movie as well (heck, I'd be happy enough if Jaylah even showed up in the next movie, but holy heck, the sheer joy I'd get to see the girls interact more. I can only imagine they would share so much interest in linguistics and culture. Low-key anthropology enthusiasts.) Some translations for the La-Sheer'na in chapter 25 are, loosely, just some casual teasing about being tired, trying coffee, and Jaylah answering that the stuff just makes her sleepier. She mentioned somewhere in there that she was up all night talking—Uhura looked back at Scotty, like, _"Oh, up all night talking, huh?"_ Jaylah calls Uhura her "koritzi" which is like a sister—probably because Uhura was the first person to catch onto Jaylah's language. It must have been really nice to speak with another person in her language again. Someone should write that fic, holy jeez. I'd cry.

There's a small glimpse of Jaylah's homeworld in this batch of chapters—a glimpse from afar. Things that might become important later on, as the story nears it's conclusion. I can't wait to see what extras the DVD/Blu-Ray will have, like—part of me really wants to see if they mention any more details on Jaylah's species and what she's really called or what her species is like, but at the same time, I know canon's going to utterly destroy everything in this fic, lmao. It's alright, though, speculation is fun as heck until we've got canon to fall back on.

Speaking of fics and canon and The Origin of Jaylah, I've recently been smitten by a fantastic Jaylah fanfic on called **_The Glittering Present_**. It definitely has a lot of thought put into it. So much detail and so much fanlore for the author's take on Jaylah's culture. So far, I think it's more Scotty/Jaylah friendship than romance, but it's got a couple moments that make my inner Scotty/Jaylah shipper really happy. It's also long as heck and just _wonderful._ Definitely check it out and give Northtreker some love.

Hopefully I'll have another batch of chapters up here by next week, I imagine there may be about three more batches before the story's end. I'm pretty determined to finish this beast soon here. * u * As always, thank you for reading, guys!


	6. 30 - 35

30.

Icarus had been a haunted sort of place to Scotty, for reasons he couldn't quite pinpoint. Perhaps it was the ghost of a memory that did not belong to him. Perhaps it was the ever present shadow, cast over him, that was Jaylah from so far away, but scarcely far at all. Being back on the Enterprise was like coming back home after an odd stay with a distant relative one barely knew.

They crossed paths once in the Enterprise's many corridors—in so many flowery words, he may have said his heart truly leapt with electric fervor at the sight of Jaylah. A smile was carved into his features before he even realized it. Their eyes met on a corridor, as he made his way toward the Bridge, and she crossed, to elsewhere.

She never took her Jupiter eyes off of him—not once—one blink, two blinks. Perfect black lashes, darker than soot, eying him with a pang of sadness. Or, perhaps, he wondered if he were merely projecting his own sadness onto her? It was unclear to him at that moment. In that moment, all that mattered were the briefest centimeters of space between their fingertips when they passed.

She lowered her head. She did not say hello.

Scotty wanted to believe he caught a whisper of, _"...tha mi gad iondrainn."_

Maybe, he thought, he may have caught an echo of, _Sier-kommatsi_ , at the tail end of her words. He wasn't sure if he'd imagined it or not, the ghosting of her voice had been so soft on his ears.

 _Arse_ he was, he said nothing. He pretended not to hear. He'd done well to pretend he didn't see or hear the things he was _seeing_ and _hearing_ since Jaylah had slipped away.

 _I'm losing my bloody mind and all I want is for you to come back._

"Maybe you should busy yourself with something other than work or Jaylah, man." Sulu had suggested, "…you know, we never see you around the bowling lanes anymore."

Scotty met Sulu, Chekov, and Chapel in the recreation hall's bowling alley. He'd spent a good deal of his free time there when the Enterprise was new to him. In the time since, however, the place had been far less of a staple. In its place, his usual stops before he ended his days had become the ten forward.

At some point in the night, he glimpsed Jaylah, several lanes down, bowling with Uhura and Miranda. They had just started their game.

"So, Ben and I are basically turning the house upside down looking for Demora, checking the backyard, checking the garden, checking every single nook and cranny, because, you know—kids can literally bend the rules of physics to fit into the weirdest places… and just as Ben's ready to call in a missing person case, my mom finds Demora in the cabinets with a strainer on her head and an army doll in each hand. Kid says she's on a mission. Her grandmother asks, _Well, Demora, what mission is that?_ Demora just goes, _I'm infiltrating Narnia._ "

Chapel laughed, Chekov tilted his head and murmured, "…Narnia?"

Scotty was only half-listening, watching Jaylah from afar. She didn't notice, nor did she look his way.

Sulu dropped into his seat beside Scotty—and suddenly, Scotty's view of Jaylah (pleasantly bending over to re-tie her shoelaces) was obscured by one very deadpan expression on the face of a very near Hikaru Sulu. Scotty nearly leapt out of his skin when Sulu did this. Sulu, very calmly, very poker-faced, said, "Your move, my man."

"What? Aye. Right." Scotty said, climbing to his feet, trying his best to pretend he hadn't been staring at Jaylah since the minute she walked in. She was cheering about something several lanes over. Uhura gave her a high five—and they slapped each other's rear ends playfully, followed by a hip-bump. Scotty did his best not to fixate on his peripheral vision.

"You don't know where Narnia is?" Chapel asked Chekov, who was tracing a pattern over her small, creamy-white knuckles.

Chekov feigned knowledge as he cleared his throat and answered, "Oh, I—I know of Narnia. Yes. It iz a place in Russia."

Sulu was snorting. Scotty's focus was broken. Chapel was giggling.

"It iz, yes!?"

"Well," Sulu muttered, "…by a stretch of exaggeration, you're not wrong."

"You've been there?" Chapel asked.

"Oh, _da!"_ Chekov nodded, "…my mother owns a cottage there."

Scotty was doing his best to focus on the lined up pins before him. Chekov was making this difficult.

"Oh, what is that like?" Chapel asked.

Chekov stammered, "Ah, vell… I visit her when I can. She lives near a beautiful wood."

"Is she the wee old gran with the hairy legs and the hooves?" Scotty asked, eying the pins.

31.

Throughout the night, Jaylah never once looked his way. Of course she wouldn't. He'd fucked up.

Somewhere between the last night they shared together and the last kiss he'd planted along the curve of her neck, she willingly disconnected.

He'd fucked up—perhaps it was by trying to tap into a side of her to which he was distinctly _uninvited_. Perhaps it was when he held her back and begged her not to go. _Pathetic_. Maybe it was when he told her, enthusiastically, that perhaps her nightmares wouldn't always be this way—when he truly knew not a damned thing about what went through her mind.

 _Oh, how he wanted to know_.

A puzzle with scattered pieces, strewn across a table before one slightly breathless, red-faced Scotsman who was told, "Fix her."

The puzzle, he imagined, was the image of a ship. Find the edges, start from the outside in.

Jaylah on the forest of Altamid, sunlight through the leaves catching on the milky white of her hair. Jaylah amongst her myriad of traps—dancing, refracted light. Jaylah in the shadows of the Franklin, illuminated by a single ray of light from a torch, _"No, Montgomery Scotty. It's yours."_

The puzzle wasn't an image of a ship at all—not the Enterprise, not the Franklin, not his mind's rendition of the Mal-Komma. Jaylah.

Jaylah lit up by drinks and music in a bar, embraced by those he'd come to know as his family. Jaylah smiling, laughing beside him in the glow of a blacked-out ship's emergency lighting as droplets of liquor filtered through zero gravity. Jaylah stretching in the mornings with a lazy yawn, cracking her bones, her shoulders, standing with one leg bent behind her until her toes touched her shoulders.

The puzzle was forming an image he recognized, but it seemed like… the closer he got to completing it, pieces were beginning to disappear. At first, he'd not noticed. He'd been too distracted by a sense of completion. A sense that a million-piece mess scattered on a table before him was finally becoming an _entirety_.

Jaylah in the Jeffries Tube, a shadow of herself under a distant light a million ladder steps away. She was small, curled in on herself, _afraid_. Jaylah glowing under a blacklight, save for the black lines that marked her body in a pattern he now knew like the back of his hand. Jaylah's eyes like glittering gold when she stared out at the stars, absently rubbing her arm when she thought he was still asleep.

For every piece he put down, several more vanished, leaving empty, black voids shaped like the pieces he thought he'd knew.

"Sier-kommatsi…" Jaylah's voice snapped him out of the viscous mire of thoughts that had trapped him.

He feigned a smile when she neared him.

They were in a bowling alley. A certain bowling alley from Aberdeen, he recalled with vivid detail.

Chekov and Keenser were on lane 12, bickering about something or other. Bowling was _inwented in Russia_. They were in Aberdeen. Jaylah was standing next to him at a bowling alley's bar in _Aberdeen_. Jaylah in her scarlet cadet's uniform, nonsensical, out of place, grinning with fang and pink lips. All while Scotty lingered at the bar, staring at a half-emptied beer, pretending she wasn't there.

Jaylah glanced at the drink in his hand and then back at Keenser and Chekov. Still going at it, those two. Jaylah looked back to him, her lips moving as though she were mulling over what to say. In the end, she opted for silence.

 _You're really there, Lassie?_

Jaylah leaned in, a playful smile on her pink lips. He thought, for a moment, she was going for the sort of playful, casual peck of a kiss she often stole in secret on the Engineering decks—but she avoided his kiss when he leaned in, and instead, she took his beer, took a swig, and then looked him straight in the eye.

 _You really are here, Lassie._

He wanted nothing more than to say a million things— _it's not even been two weeks and I'm crumbling, I feel like I haven't heard your voice in months, where have you been, what did I do?_ —and still, she had a way of rendering him without words, even almost a year since their haphazard love affair first started.

Jaylah finally spoke—he heard her _voice_ , but not her words.

An explosive crash of a bowling ball to pins snapped him out of his reverie, followed by Chekov groaning and Keenser bouncing about with a strange sort of victory dance that was distinctly _Roylan_. Scowling, Scotty answered, "…could ye repeat that, Lassie?"

A teasing roll of her gold eyes as Jaylah put her hands on her hips. She opened her mouth to speak again.

Another burst of bowling pins scattering as Jim (challenging a very frustrated-looking Bones) fist-pumped the air and shouted, "HOW'S THAT FOR RUSTY, DOC?"

Again, Scotty missed her words.

He winced and palmed his face, feeling so damned exhausted.

"Lassie, I cannae hear ye."

Jaylah eyed him for a moment. She stole another swig of his beer, and then she narrowed her eyes. Between the bouncing music and the Captain's shouting, Scotty could hardly make heads or tails of the whisper that crossed her lips. She was glancing downward, long, black lashes pressed to her lower lids.

"Zat vas inwented in Russia!" Chekov yelled, obscuring Jaylah's whisper.

Scotty groaned and leaned closer to Jaylah, letting his hands slip around her waist and pull her closer. Light and graceful, she let him rest his head against her chest as he spoke, "…Lassie, please say that again. I feel like I'm losin' me mind. I feel like y'er speakin' and I cannae hear a goddamn thing ye say."

Her hands were small and gentle as they moved tenderly around his shoulders. He could feel her stroking the back of his head, playing with his hair the way she often did as they fell asleep together—hell, just the memory of her in bed beside him felt like an eternity ago. She was warm beneath the red uniform, _inviting_.

"You can't hear a thing I say." Jaylah repeated—finally, _yes_ , he had heard her voice!

Scotty looked up to her, brightening just barely, "…aye, yes! Say it again!"

"You cannot hear a thing I say." Jaylah said.

"Nae, nae, not that! What, whatever it is, what it was ye were sayin' before all this!"

"I need to fight alone."

Reflexively, he felt something inside of him pulling, _tearing_.

"Jaylah, just… this time…" Scotty murmured, his forehead against her bosom as she held him, "…just this time, don't go. Don't go, just… just stay and…"

"You never heard me anyway."

Emptiness.

Scotty looked up, realizing there was only emptiness between his hands, in his arms, in the space Jaylah had occupied.

The bowling alley was gone.

The lights and the music were gone.

Only a blaring, droning sort of alarm in the distance. Muffled as though it rang from beneath the water.

Scotty sat at a bar in the middle of pitch-black darkness. He looked up—strikingly undisturbed by the void around him. He turned back to his beer and took another swig, only to find that Jaylah had finished it when he wasn't looking.

"… _heck_."

His eyes opened and Scotty awoke to the sound of the 0500 alarm screeching.

Sitting up out of reflex, he had long since stopped looking over to his side to meet Jaylah's sleeping form. She wasn't there. Not this time, nor was she there the times before, for almost three weeks now.

After showering and pulling his uniform from the closet, a dream of a bowling alley was disintegrating in his mind, along with the sound of pins rattling and bowling balls thundering across waxed floors.

As he made his bed, a dream of Chekov and Keenser was dissolving in his mind, along with the shouting of Jim's victory over Bones.

As he stepped out of his quarters alone, the last piece of his dream to wither and fade was the sensation of Jaylah playing with his hair as she whispered, _"I am letting go, now."_

 _Jaylah would love Earth._

32.

Every once in a blue moon, his name would come up on the Away Mission list. Scenarios requiring a mechanic's mind, situations in which the First Officer took the Comm, instances in which Jim managed to drag him (all of figuratively _kicking and screaming)_ out of the lower decks.

One mission found the good Captain escorting a Federation Commissioner Elei Chy'oh, from the Maximoff Outpost on Caleb VII to the Enterprise. From there, she would be escorted to the Starbase Zorya. Now, if there was one thing that was rather well-known about the Lennarian Commissioner, it was that she _hated_ shuttlecraft flights. Lo and behold, it would be upper-atmospheric interference that made transporter use impossible in escorting Chy'oh to the Enterprise. Thus, the sickly Commissioner was retrieved with the presence of the good Doctor McCoy—and Bones was hardly excited to take a shuttlecraft down to Caleb VII all to ease the traveling experience of one space-sickness prone Lennarian.

It was a routine mission with very little incident. At least, until the shuttlecraft's impulse engine malfunction.

"…and that, Bones, is why you always bring an Engineer." Jim said to the irate doctor beside him.

Bones was scowling, looking over the various errors and system warnings on the screen.

"…you had to bring two of them."

"Two heads are better than one—and, just as well, Jaylah counts for security in this operation." Jim smiled at Jaylah, who nodded, sitting calm beside Commissioner Chy'oh.

Jaylah had been quiet the whole way, arms crossed over her chest. She had smiled at Scotty once when he joined them, but had said nothing during the trip down to Caleb VII and through the trip back. Everything about that silence stung hard. This uncomfortable silence was going on far too long.

The Commissioner herself looked only mildly inconvenienced by it all—she was lulling in and out of wakefulness after Bones had given her something for the severe space sickness she was so prone to (Scotty had, as per the norm of a typically _awful day_ , learned this quite firsthand. Scotty also learned that Lennarians could upchuck acid potent enough to corrode through any leather boot unfortunate enough to be in said Lennarian's path.)

"…dearie, are we in space yet?" Commissioner Chy'oh's sleepy head bobbed toward Jaylah.

Jaylah gave Chy'oh's hand a gentle rub and nodded, "We are in space, Commissioner."

"Oh …oh, dear." Chy'oh paled, leaning Scotty's way again.

Sitting on her other side, Scotty was already unfastening his buckles and muttering, "Oh, dear, _indeed_."

Scotty was quick to get diagnostics on the shuttlecraft underway. Repairs followed for the next hour and a half, while Chy'oh hummed and occasionally slept and Bones monitored her with mild obsessive-compulsion on his tricorder.

"Not a chance we can't have her simply beamed aboard the Enterprise, now?" Bones grimaced, "…or, heck, have someone beam us a can of ginger ale?"

"Might have been possible if Spock hadn't abandoned us to respond to a distress signal. In the meantime, Bones, just keep her dreaming." Jim answered.

"Yannoe, I might 'ave been able to beam ya a bloody six pack if ye'd left me on the ship. Chances are, I wouldn't be walking aroun' in only one boot." Scotty called to them from a mess of open panel and wiring.

He was reaching back for an interlocker when his arm brushed against a slender leg. He glanced back over his shoulder—it'd been a while since Jaylah had snuck up on him like that. He hadn't been expecting to see her approach him, nor had he expected to see one E12 interlocker in her one proffered hand.

"…thanks, Lass." Scotty said, accepting the tool and turning back to the mess of panels.

Across the shuttlecraft's small cabin, Bones and Jim were bickering with Spock about regulations and procedural codes and orders of operation. Spock was clearly winning, judging by the annoyance in Bones's voice. Jim was better these days at just living through Spock's logic wars. Perhaps between the snarky doctor and the tired Captain, Jaylah had taken the opportunity to offer a helping hand.

"I always enjoyed repairing the shuttlecrafts." Jaylah said, kneeling beside Scotty.

"Aye. Luckily the impulse drives are just having a small overheatin' issue. Worst we've got on our plates right now is floatin' around like a dead duck. Touch wood, nothin' that'll kill us." Scotty tried his damndest not to be so obviously perked up by Jaylah's presence. He fixed his focus on the mechanical mess before him, trying his hardest not to drink in the sight of Jaylah beside him like an oasis to a desert wanderer.

Jaylah tilted her head, visibly puzzled by his words.

Answering her curious expression, Scotty said, "…a dead duck, it's, ah… it's a sort of bird on—"

"I know what a duck is. But why are we to touch wood?"

Scotty opened his mouth to begin an explanation, before realizing he'd never really thought about the old turn of phrase. He squinted and then said, "…Yannoe, we _just do._ "

Jaylah nodded and before he realized it, the silence had been filled with the sound of her working beside him. The process was always faster with another set of hands—smaller, nimbler hands, that had a way of being just where they needed to be at any given moment. She was _there,_ and it wasn't a dream.

"Hold that for a second, Lassie?"

"Aye."

He tried not to smile when she said it. In that moment, she was closer to him than she had been in weeks. Physically, at least.

He caught himself staring, distracted. She worked with intense focus, lips slightly parted, eyes boring into the puzzle before her. Stray tresses of silvery hair wisped past her cheek and he fought off the urge to brush them back behind her ear as he'd done just a little over a week ago. It felt like an eternity since.

She paused, turning her eyes slowly to meet his.

"Do not get distracted." She said.

"Aye. Y'er right." Scotty answered.

Yet, still—they were both paused, just still in that moment. Jaylah was right, they had a job to do. They weren't there to play around, they had to fix the thing and meet with the Enterprise at the designated coordinates.

 _Yet, still_.

"It's… just been a while. I've missed ye." Scotty confessed softly, "…missed workin' with ye like this."

 _This isn't the time, nor the place, you git._

"I know." Jaylah answered, before turning her attention back to their task.

"Ye… been alright lately?" Scotty winced, chiding himself for succumbing to the urge to make small talk.

 _Idiot. Idiot. Not the time. Idiot._

"I have been fine."

 _She's fine. There, you got your answer, get back to work._

"Aye. Grand. Great. Fantastic."

"…and you, Montgomery Scotty?"

A breath caught in his chest for a moment as he stumbled over the want to reflexively answer, _I've been miserable and I think I might be falling apart and possibly a terribly codependent lover but, you know, I'm not dead, so I think I'm okay._

"Fine."

"Good. Fantastic." Jaylah answered, tone flat and almost uninterested.

"…that it is."

"Aye."

Finally, Scotty's resolve broke, and after glancing in the direction of the very occupied Captain and Doctor, he looked back to Jaylah and spoke just shy of a whisper, "…look, Lass, did I _do_ something ta make ye scorn me like this all of the sudden?"

"I do not know what you mean."

"I… Lass, I feel a wee bit like ye know exactly what I mean?"

"I feel a wee bit like you're acting takh-mir."

Straightening slightly, taking some offense at the accusation, Scotty answered, "I… I am **_not_** acting dakh-mir."

"You are being a bit takh-mirsa."

A small huff, and then Scotty whispered back, _"A' cheart leithid dhut fhéin."_

Jaylah glanced his way, fire in her features as she quietly snarled, " _Tha usa air a_ takh-mir _air fad_ , gatakh."

"Ha, oh, _gatakh_ , nae, then? That's just lovely. Just sier-mirsa!"

"…sier-mirsa." Jaylah repeated softly, her hands falling still on the open machinery.

"Aye." Silence fell over them both for a moment, before Scotty sighed, _"Dé tha ceárr ort?"_

"Madakh-nil."

"Lassie, ye cannae just tell me that. I know it isn't nothing. If nothing were botherin' ye, we wouldn't even be bickerin' like this."

"Thank _God!_ It's about damned time, Spock." Bones sighed from across the cabin.

Spock's voice hinted at the Enterprise being well on its way back to their location, having found the source of the distress call and attending to a drifting, damaged freighter. Jim thanked Spock for a job well done, and Bones took a seat next to the Commissioner as she spoke in a dopey voice, "Is that nice young man coming back for us now?"

"He is indeed, Miss, don't you worry your pretty little head over it."

"My head is just _swimming_ … is… the ship still moving?"

"Well, we're in a light drift, but not particularly _moving_ …"

"Oh… oh, dear…" The commissioner murmured.

"Ji-Jim! Bag, bag, bag, bag!" Bones barked, while the Commissioner groaned.

Jaylah winced and quietly whispered, "…this… is not the business."

"Aye. At least you still have both your boots."

"Different bag, Jim! Acid-proof bag, Jim!" Bones yelled from afar, "…this isn't going to burn through the hull is it?"

"The hull's got several reinforced layers of bulkhead and metal, Doc, we'll be _alright_." Scotty answered, before turning back to Jaylah, "Look, Jaylah, I know this isn't the time nor place, but this… whatever _this_ is, it's… it's awful. This not talking. This avoiding. This bickerin' when I finally steal a minute with ye. I dinnae even know what I did ta upset ye."

"You did nothing wrong," Jaylah answered, "…you did only what you could. And now, I do only what I can, to keep you safe."

"Safe?"

"Safe." Jaylah nodded, before two soft fingertips stroked across his temple. Just her touch gave him a sort of hot, feverish chill. It was every bit as welcome and _desired_ as it was, in some way, dreaded—like a sort of goodbye kiss he'd had a feeling was coming.

"What do ye mean by that?"

"…you know what I mean," Jaylah said, their repairs finished. She closed the open panel before them, and all he could do was gape at her like an open-mouthed, heartbroken idiot.

"I… talk ta me after this. Please?" Scotty said, still keeping their conversation quiet and hidden from Jim and Bones—not that they would have even understood the first half of the linguistic mess if they'd heard it.

"I will. But for now. Our mission." Jaylah said, rising and forging a very straight and unbothered path to the Commissioner's side. Engines repaired and systems rebooted, the shuttlecraft was no longer drifting. Scotty, on the other hand, was decidedly _drifting_ in some lost void.

33.

"No Jaylah today, eh?" Cupcake's voice came.

Scotty had been waiting for her in the quiet edge of the ten forward lounge. She'd said she'd meet him there after their shifts ended. After a half hour of waiting for a normally-punctual Jaylah, Scotty had a needling feeling that she wasn't going to show.

But at least there was Cupcake.

Cupcake, big and burly, sometimes an _arse_ , sometimes a mate. Knowing the guy, it probably depended on what his horoscope prescribed him for that particular day.

"She…" Scotty began, before deciding it was none of Cupcake's business, "…I'm just 'ere 'aving a drink. You?"

"Same as every night. Unwinding."

"There a reason why y'er comin' up to unwind by me, then?"

Cupcake scoffed and took a seat opposite of Scotty, "Been a while since I saw you around here, is all. Once you and Jaylah became a thing, I was a bit worried she made you quit drinking or something."

Scotty couldn't help but laugh, "Oh, _heck_ , I probably doubled it just ta keep up with the lass."

"Your poor liver."

"I'll get another after this next drink."

Cupcake shrugged, fixing his eyes on the stars beyond the viewing pane, "…a true Pisces, drinking like a fish."

Scotty felt a small smile rise at the corner of his mouth. Well, at least _that_ was always spot-on.

"…how does that bunk work?"

"What? Astrology?"

"Aye. If y'er not even born on Earth, I mean. How would it even work? How would you get a horoscope if ye, say, weren't born on Earth, or be able ta say, _oh, that bampot's a bloody Gemini, can't stand that one._ "

Cupcake leaned back in his chair, beaming, "…oh, shit. Is the cantankerous Mister Scott really going to ask me the synastry question?"

"Wha… I dinnae even know _what that is."_

"You're asking about Jaylah, aren't you?"

"Nae! …Well, maybe I was gettin' there. I mean. Curious, is all."

"Hah!" Cupcake barked and clapped, "This is rich. Well. For the record. It doesn't work. Because astrology really is all bunk. _But_. To answer your question more specifically, every planet has a set of constellations unique to them. Just like they've got their own calendar and their own seasons."

"Well, aye, that makes sense."

"A lot of species don't bother with it because they didn't look to the stars for guidance and make up gods and deities and elements to correspond to it. Humans did though. You know. The nomads, the farmers, the skywatchers, the whole Cradle of Life culture. Hell, even scientists of those days took the ideas and symbols into their own practices and called it alchemy. That's how you get your elements pertaining to each sign. Fire, earth, water, air, all that jazz. Some planets had similar ideas, but different elemental hierarchies."

This was all getting _very long_ for something which did _not_ hold his interest. He wasn't sure if he was feeling a sleepy lull or if Cupcake was generally that boring to listen to—but truth be told, he'd only ever seen the guy light up when talking about either this subject or sports. Both subjects being the top two to bore Scotty to tears.

"You know a lot about other planets' takes on it?"

"A few of 'em do it. I like to look into it when I meet someone from another planet and they talk about cultural fixations on stars. I'm not some gruff meathead, you know."

"Innit a plot twist."

"You were getting to your little lady friend," Cupcake said, one brow quirked, "…it's almost a complete blank. Federation doesn't have much on her planet's people or culture and she didn't know what astrology was when I asked if she had anything like it back home. She did say something like—some people are said to be born with the sea in them—water signs, maybe—and others are born with the sky in them—maybe air signs? Others are born with sparks in them. So I'm guessing their hierarchy is water, air, and fire and it'd go off of that. The rest is all mythology I wouldn't know heads or tails of, man. But if general rules apply… fire and water don't mix well. Either the water's going to snuff out the fire or the fire's going to boil the water into vapor."

"…well. That was thorough."

Cupcake gave a casual sort of wink and a nod, "I do what I can when I can. But really. Synastry's more than the surface signs. We all have so much more going on under the sun signs. Where your Venus is, where your 5th House is, your North Nodes and South Nodes, past life implications. You know."

"Not really. Nae. Don't really know it."

"Oh. Let me _tell_ you about the North Node and South Nodes," Cupcake leaned in, all of slapping one thick palm on the table in excitement.

"Do ye have to?"

"I absolutely have to," Cupcake said, clearing his throat and then explaining, "…you see, your North Node is a specific point on your astrological chart, representative of your destiny, your path in life, your learning curve. Opposite of that—mathematically 180º around your chart—you've got your South Node, which has all sorts of implications of your past life, your comfort zone, the old habits that you can't break, like speaking your native language when you're living in another country, you know?"

Scotty was absent-mindedly rubbing at his neck as he listened, trying his damndest not to nod off.

"Synastry charts like to play up that past life South Node shit, though, I guess because romance stories sell like hotcakes. I wouldn't pay it much mind. I'd look it up, though. Has some good life advice. Even if it is all bunk."

"So… ye believe it, then?"

"Well." Cupcake shrugged, "…I did before I came into space. When you're on Earth, surrounded almost entirely by other humans, you don't think a whole lot about what else is out there. The thought of other planets having their own astrology never crossed my mind. Never met anyone that made me wonder that question—what's someone's sign when they're not even born on Earth? I believed in it a lot back then. Not so much these days. Still like a good cup of positive advice every now and then, though. Makes me wonder, though."

Scotty waited for Cupcake to continue after he trailed off, before a moment passed and Scotty realized Cupcake wasn't going to continue that train of thought. Now, however, he got Scotty wondering _what_ it was that got him _wondering_ and about _what_ was Cupcake _wondering?_

"…wonder what?"

"What?" Cupcake said, looking very puzzled from behind his glass of beer.

"Ye said it makes ye wonder though—wonder about what?"

"Oh," Cupcake finished his gulp and then answered, "…alright, don't laugh, man, but—makes me wonder about that whole stars and fate thing. When people on Earth made this shit up, they had no idea there were others like us on different planets, hell, they didn't even know about the planets out there. So you know. Makes me wonder. If there's one thing astrology taught me, it's that every little thing in life is a piece of a bigger machine, everything squared and trined and sextiled into perfect working order. It's all math holding the pieces together. Back then, people thought there was that certain someone out there for you, on your planet, with that sort of connection that you'd carry from one life to the next. Souls and shit."

Scotty said nothing, but instead, listened.

Cupcake continued, "When I came to space, I was coming off a bad breakup at the time. I used to think guys like Jim, banging alien girls, used to think that sorta thing was _weird_. But it got me thinking. What did people do, back then? Way back then. If the math is real, and that perfect someone is there, because some cosmic algebra calculates it… but they're not born on your planet? Back then… you were just shit out of luck. Over and over again, every life, until somehow, the dice landed just right."

Something about that left a sort of sinking feeling inside of him as he listened. Of course, none of this nonsense was _real_. But certainly, there were those in the past who believed it. Every word of it. Metaphysical maths binding souls like some quantum thread—who was one to say it was isolated to a single planet?

"Must 'ave been a lot of lonely lives." Scotty said.

"You're damn right about that. At least. I think." Cupcake said, "…man, y'got me all depressed now."

Scotty gave Cupcake an awkward pat on the shoulder as the burly man's lower lip quivered in a way of holding back a tidal wave of emotion.

 _Oh, heck. Heck, no._

"Ah… there, there."

34.

Scotty had managed to slip away politely when Cupcake's friends all of tore through the Ten Forward to pull their Brave Leader into a row of shots. Cupcake offered an invite that Scotty quickly declined, already halfway into his escape. The security officer shrugged it off and joined the rest of his red shirted crewmen in liquor games while Scotty decided, definitely, that Jaylah was _not_ going to show.

He wasn't sure if he was more pulled under by that or the utterly _depressing_ conversation Cupcake had left him with. Not that he was one to believe in such nonsense as souls and reincarnation. Surely, that sort of lonely scenario, in an alternate universe where fate was determined by cosmic maths, such a life or series of lives, could only be the result of some wrongdoing, some karmic punishment.

 _What did you do in a past life or twenty?_

He brushed the thought away quickly—it was all bunk pseudoscience and folklore at best.

Carving a path for a nearby lift, hastily en route to his quarters, he wound up catching sight of _her_.

Sometimes, seeing her across the way like that carried with it a sense of being kicked in the gut—at least, aptly put in the words of a closeted masochist. Just sight alone brought the touch of some unseen electric pulse that any normal lad would describe as _just butterflies._

Jaylah had stopped when she saw him, just as he had stopped when he saw her. She looked to be walking in his direction. But as he resumed his course, she stayed. She waited, and in silence, she followed him into the lift. Looking up at him, she said nothing as the doors closed and the lift began to move. All he wanted was to bury his mouth against hers and feel her body pressed to his.

Instead, he settled for reaching out to her—fingertips brushed against her own slender, moondust-white digits—and she allowed it.

Finally, she took a breath and she spoke, "I am sorry. I stayed a bit later than I meant. I do not like to leave things unfinished."

"Aye. It's alright. Wouldn't 'ave been mad at ye."

"…maybe so, but it would have been wrong of me to leave you waiting when I said I would meet you."

A quiet laugh escaped him as he said, "Well. Thanks for that."

They both leaned against the wall of the lift in silence. He savored the warm feel of her skin and the way her smoky gaze fixed on their intertwining fingers. There was still such a vast distance in the few inches between them, and yet, that one point of connection made the whole of that distance _bearable_.

"Been buried in y'er textbooks?"

Jaylah nodded, "…I have been preparing for the Cochrane Exams."

"Y'er gonna do fine."

"I study to ensure that I will do fine." She answered.

"…must be summer on Earth, then."

Jaylah looked at him with some interest and when her silence spoke of curiosity, Scotty explained, "…at least, as I've heard all the non-Earth Academies run on the same schedule as solar dates. If y'er takin' the Cochrane Exams soon, it must be about June on Earth."

"June is a month name?"

"Aye. Hot as heck. June. July. August. Even on the San Francisco Academy, it was a bit hot. Beach was nice, though."

"In a few days, I will be leaving with several other cadets. For the duration of the exams. I… did not want to leave without seeing you again."

"You'll be back, though, aye, Lassie?"

"If I pass the exams, then yes. If I do not. I will not be approved for returning to the Enterprise." Jaylah said. When he paled, she looked at him with a shadow of a smirk and she added, "…I do not think I will fail the exams."

"Of c'erse you won't. Workin' with me almost a year now, I'd feel like a damned shoddy mentor if ye didn't pass. But… I've got nothin' but faith in ye. Ye never fail ta amaze me."

He wished there had been more to say in such lighthearted manner, but when Jaylah glanced downward and let the silence fell over them both, the silence was heavy, _crushing_ even.

"Ye said somethin' about… all this… all of this wantin' me ta be _safe_. Lassie, how is being around you anything _but_ safe?"

Jaylah hesitated, but she spoke—her voice was small, riding the edge of a certain pained _something_ , "You have the dreams I have when I am too close. The dreams of… of _Krall_. Yes?"

"…aye. I had the dreams."

"Nightmares. My nightmares… my nightmares do not stop when I wake up. They follow me when I am awake. In my eyes, Mannus. In my ears, the _bees_. Sometimes in my chest and my body. I feel… Krall's prison. I… I thought that if my body left that death planet, I would be free. My body is free now, Montgomery Scotty… but my mind. It is not free. No matter where I go. I am still not free."

Their brushing of fingertips had become a full holding and caressing of palms. The gap between them was closing. As she neared, she felt cold.

"I cannot share this with you. These are not your nightmares to have. You… you are…" Jaylah's hand tightened around his fingers, "…you are brilliant and you are happiness. I… I am all anger and unhappiness."

"…but, Lass, that isn't true at all. Ye were happy. Weren't ye? Ye laughed and ye… ye smiled more and ye shine so much brighter than ye realize. Lass, don't tell me all of it was just, just… I dinnae, where exactly is it y'er going with this? Because, I-I haven't the slightest clue where I'm going with it. I know ye, Lass, ye see something broken and y'er first instinct is ta try and fix it. _What_ is it y'er tellin' me now is y'er idea of _fixin_ ' what ye think is broken?"

"I am not trying to fix what is broken, Montgomery Scotty. I am trying to prevent the one I love from becoming broken."

"…Lass. Jaylah. Runnin' away from all this. _That'll_ break me. These last few days, weeks, _that's_ been breakin' me. If it comes down ta losin' me mind if I'm with ye or losin' me mind if I'm without ye, I guess it's a Kobayashi Maru either way. But I'd like to give it all I can."

He had been broken before, plenty and many of times.

She looked up to him with a smile—a softer smile than her norm. Dampened. Bringing her hands to either side of his face with a gentle touch, she leaned up. Her lips were every bit as familiar as he recalled. Soft, yet slightly chapped, lips brushing against his like feathers. Jaylah's breath carried electricity on it, it seemed, that bore through him like a subtle current. He didn't want it to end, but it was the briefest taste of the kiss he'd craved. Sure enough, her hands dropped back to her sides and she looked up at him with only sadness in her eyes.

 _That was a kiss goodbye, wasn't it?_

Jaylah would be the one to break him beyond repair.

"Yannoe. Heck. What am I saying. Look. I'm sorry about all that. Just forget it. Forget I said anythin'. Don't… don't let me distract ye. Just. Just go and blow that exam out of the water, Lassie, I'm rootin' for ye the whole way. Whatever happens, happens, I just want to see ye show the world what ye've got. I'll be here. I'll always be here. Whether ye want to come back to _here_ or not. But…"

Reaching his stop on the officers' residential floor, the doors whirred open. The corridor beyond was cold and uninviting.

"…heck." Scotty murmured, his throat tightening as he looked back to Jaylah, "…if this is it, then, Lassie. If this is what ye want. For _this_. For _us._ If this is the only option ye see as best… then I believe in it. I believe in _you_. I always will. Not a damn thing'll ever change that. Just promise me ye'll never, _ever_ give up fighting for _you_."

He sucked back the urge to crumble into a pathetic heap over her and stepped out of the lift.

Maybe, he thought with some wavering hope, just _maybe_ , this was all a bad dream and it wasn't really happening as it was. Maybe he would hear her light footsteps rushing after him. Maybe he would turn and he would see her sneaking after him. Maybe they would fall back into each other's arms and maybe he would kiss her and maybe they would find their way back to his bed and just fuck all this nonsense away like there hadn't ever been a problem at all.

As he turned back to her, however, the doors were already sliding shut and she stood firmly in place.

The last glimpse he got of Jaylah was of her staring after him.

35.

In the days that remained for the small handful of cadets who were slated to take the Cochrane Exams at the Yorktown Academy, none were on standard daily rosters. They were all encouraged—Captain's orders—to take the time remaining aboard the ship to study.

Jim's voice over the communications lines were heard throughout the ship. Scotty listened closely from his usual haunt in the Engineering decks, with Keenser at his side. A congratulatory speech to the cadets he'd chosen to come aboard with them after the departure from Yorktown one year ago, nearly. A good blessing and a wish for good luck and for their laborious studies and hands-on experience to have been more than enough to prepare them for a penultimate stage of Academy examinations.

It wasn't quite graduation, but those who passed the Cochrane Exams would move on to Final Exams in the following year. Jaylah's progression was every bit as accelerated as anyone had predicted—if she kept up her breakneck pace, perhaps two, two and a half years would be the new Academy record. Few knew that much of it stemmed from the life she lived before Altamid.

Scotty did not see her again before she left.

Keenser seemed to pick up on the absolute _misery_ he was bottling up. The Roylan tugged at Scotty's sleeve, catching him when he stared into space. During downtime, Keenser appeared beside him with tea. Keenser rarely spoke. Even now, Keenser said nothing, and neither did Scotty.

* * *

 **Notes** :

Given that they're starting to speak more of Jaylah's language and mix it in with Scotty's Gàidhlig (which I'm probably butchering) I'm going to throw in a small translation key here. Subtitles, as it were. By the end, I'll go back and add a more thorough translation key to prior phrases from Jaylah's language, La-Sheer'na.

 _[CH.30]_

• Scotty wanted to believe he caught a whisper of, _"...tha mi gad iondrainn."_ — "...I miss you."

• _Sier-kommatsi_ , a term of endearment Jaylah uses. She explains in chapter 24 that it essentially means lover, or beloved. When one fights in the _Sarr-kelm Tha'shir Na_ ritual, it is to fight for the one they want to be with, or, their _Sier-kommatsi_.

• Scotty has a hard time pronouncing the hard "Tha" sound of Jaylah's language and it always comes out sounding like, "Da" — it's a much thicker sound with almost a barely-audible click at the back of the tongue that probably would make it sound like a hard "Dah" rather than the softer Gàidhlig "tha."

 _[CH.32]_

• "I feel a wee bit like you're acting _thakh-mirsa."_ Jaylah says this to Scotty—and it's implied she's said it before, although, who knows whether the context the past times she said it to him were teasing or out of just language lessons. _Thakh-mirsa_ is La-Sheer'na for crazy or literally, "(having) poor math" or maybe like, irrational, with "mirsa" meaning "is" or "having."

• A small huff, and then Scotty whispered back, _"A' cheart leithid dhut fhéin."_ — Same to you.

• Jaylah glanced his way, fire in her features as she quietly snarled, _"Tha usa air a thakh-mirsa air fad, gatakh."_ — this is a rough mix of Gàidhlig and La-Sheer'na words, but it essentially is like, "You are definitely (irrational), (git)"

• _"Gatakh"_ — Honestly, the best translation to this is "git." Plain and simple. Heck, Jaylah, being all good at pushing people away.

• _"Sier-mirsa"_ — It's a bit like. Mirsa is a modifier that refers to the subject of the sentence "having" and Sier is love, so it's literally "having love" but would be more simply, "...lovely." Said in a way like, "OH, alright then. Bloody lovely."

• Scotty sighed, _"Dé tha ceárr ort?"_ — Gàidhlig, "What is wrong?"

• _"Madakh-nil."_ — Literally, "Nothing is."

Why all the language fuckery? _Because it's **fun** , Jan._

Although there are a few days-long timeskips littered throughout the story, I like to imagine that in the parts not focused on, they spend a lot of their downtime teaching one another terms and phrases from their home languages. Obviously, with Scotty, the primary language is English, but there's something a bit more personal and "just between us" to teach Jaylah the Gàidhlig he picked up from his family. Plus, he probably just thinks sounds cute as heck when she says it.

However—with Jaylah headed back to Yorktown for a stay, it may be a while before they trade words again.


End file.
